So anyways, Chris pitched up a wee bit later and told me that it was a french national holiday. He rather humourously pointed out that Nicolas Sarkozy (new French President) had based a lot of his campaign on getting people back into work and working more than the 35 hours maximum they do here. Ironic I guess that his first day after victory in the elections happened to be a national holiday. Still, it's to be expected most likely.
I rightly had a look about to see what was the cause of this lack of activity and general siesta-ness and it's VE Day. Awesome stuff! So in true style have been reading up about WWII and the Battle of Britain. It's amazing how much cool stuff is out there in the ether available from one's own arm chair and I had a trippy few minutes digging around archives and finding bits of black and white video and photographs and articles and web pages. It's incredible what's gone online and the wealth and depth of information available.
(Housemate) Andy's just downloaded the recent "Have I Got News For You" and it's kind of getting me into this whole "keeping up with current affairs" thing. I always look over various news websites and subscribe to loads of news RSS feeds but now I'm kind of craving a newspaper morning every once in a while. Maybe I should just print out the Telegraph website every day and read that? Still I guess it's good enough to keep on the internet for a while and save the planet the the extra trees for my newspapers.
Rather funkily I also found out the word "news" originates from the Middle English "newes" as the plural of "new". I always used to think it was an acronym for "north, east, west, south" but apparently that's incorrect. Learn something new every day eh? =) I love words, me.
German bomber over London in WW2
