Another scandal for the church, already battered by the paedophile problem. An English bishop this time, admittedly now no longer part of old Popy’s mob but with breakaway followers of his own, is on trial in Germany for denying the holocaust. He has refused to attend the trial but it is going ahead without him. He admits it and will be found guilty and fined in absentia. Like flat-earthers, fundamentalists, and the belief in intelligent design when all the evidence piles up to proves the opposite I find it difficult to understand just what the point is in denial of this kind. The Bishop only has to visit one of the concentration camps (we have been to Dachau) to know he is in the wrong. Human beings really are the strangest animals and I sometimes think the more intelligent they are the more stupid they can be at the same time if that is possible.
When I was in Kenya I worked on a farm growing flowers, gladioli and carnations to be exact, but I never knew what a huge industry flower growing is in Kenya. I thought our farm at Njoro was an exception. Evidently now disaster has struck because of the cloud of ash from the Icelandic volcano grounding all flights. Flowers can only be kept in cold storage a short while. There are about 300 growers in Kenya employing 100000 people and estimate they are losing one and a half to two million dollars a day and flowers make up twenty percent of Kenya’s exports. Let’s hope the flights resume quickly. Suddenly one realises just how much in bondage we are to the aviation industry. Millions of passengers all over Europe are stranded, the airlines like the flower growers of Kenya are losing millions of dollars a day and it must surely have a terrible knock-on effect. The holiday season has started and if people can’t reach their destination the domino effect comes into play when all the trades reliant on the season; hotels, taxis, restaurants, souvenir shops and more will suffer, and here on Crete they had a bad enough season last year. Douglas wants to fly to the UK this week for his mother’s seventieth birthday and we don’t know if he is going to be able to do so. As if that isn’t bad enough, at the end of this week Greek airports will grind to a halt by a two day strike – yet again!
On a lighter vein, talking of flowers, April is a yellow month which is something I’ve probably remarked on before: the lemon trees laden with fruit, the broom in full bloom, the wild sage and all along the roadside yellow flowers in abundance. Van Gogh would have loved it. He called yellow God’s own colour.