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It's not been a good week, outside the small island, has it?
Israel now officially twinning itself with Somalia.
The oil-spill in the Gulf of Mexico now apparently in the top 40 of all time and approaching being as big a spill as the Torrey Canyon - although it probably won't get to be as bad as the Amoco Cadiz - which, along with the Braer, are the three I remember best.
But, here, overshadowing both of those, are the terrible events in Cumbria. Whitehaven, Egremont, Seascale - these are places that, until the end of Border television news a year or so ago, were as familiar to us, as we ate our evening meal, as Onchan or Ramsey.
One of D-d's friends at college knew the solicitor that was killed - he had done quite a lot of work experience with him. Another young man from college comes from the area and left college at lunchtime on Wednesday, after getting a text message, 'looking pale and upset' to quote D-d. She doesn't know whether he is linked to any of the dead or injured.
We spent some time on the phone discussing it - it is so hard to understand why a normal, friendly, guy could just turn on family, colleagues, and people at random like that.
I suppose the only good thing about it is that it is such an incredibly rare occurrence in Britain thanks to the low level of gun ownership (they actually gave the figures on the news last night). But it would be better if it was the sort of thing that had not happened, nor would ever happen again.
My heart goes out to everyone touched by this awful tragedy.
And in the middle of all this, we get on with life as usual - which in my case has meant producing industrial quantities of carrot cake to sell at church over T.T. It is very hard to equate what is happening both near and far with the ordinariness of baking...
Israel now officially twinning itself with Somalia.
The oil-spill in the Gulf of Mexico now apparently in the top 40 of all time and approaching being as big a spill as the Torrey Canyon - although it probably won't get to be as bad as the Amoco Cadiz - which, along with the Braer, are the three I remember best.
But, here, overshadowing both of those, are the terrible events in Cumbria. Whitehaven, Egremont, Seascale - these are places that, until the end of Border television news a year or so ago, were as familiar to us, as we ate our evening meal, as Onchan or Ramsey.
One of D-d's friends at college knew the solicitor that was killed - he had done quite a lot of work experience with him. Another young man from college comes from the area and left college at lunchtime on Wednesday, after getting a text message, 'looking pale and upset' to quote D-d. She doesn't know whether he is linked to any of the dead or injured.
We spent some time on the phone discussing it - it is so hard to understand why a normal, friendly, guy could just turn on family, colleagues, and people at random like that.
I suppose the only good thing about it is that it is such an incredibly rare occurrence in Britain thanks to the low level of gun ownership (they actually gave the figures on the news last night). But it would be better if it was the sort of thing that had not happened, nor would ever happen again.
My heart goes out to everyone touched by this awful tragedy.
And in the middle of all this, we get on with life as usual - which in my case has meant producing industrial quantities of carrot cake to sell at church over T.T. It is very hard to equate what is happening both near and far with the ordinariness of baking...
