Tag Archives: emptying caliburn

Thursday 13th December 2012 – I wish I could remember …

… who it was who rang me at 17:00 today. I would give them a big round of applause. For at 17:00 I should have been at Marianne’s helping her move a bed, but instead I was totally flat out – crashed out on the sofa. I do remember having the most vague and incomprehensible discussion with someone while I was trying my very best to wake up. I wonder what the other party must have made of it.

This morning I had the usual couple of hours on the radio programme that I’m trying to write, and then I went out to empty Caliburn seeing as I had this bed to move. But tidying up isn’t my strongpoint as you know and it didn’t quite work out how it should have done. I ended up leaving the false floor in the van and putting a pile of stuff underneath it.

Pascal, Marianne’s son, and I dropped off a few things around Pionsat and then went to the Chateau to pick up this bed. We were also treated to some exciting news – while the Water Board was digging in the chateau yard to lay a new water pipe, part of the yard collapsed and some of their equipment fell into a long-lost subterranean crypt of some description. Of course, Marianne is in her element, or she would be if she were feeling better, because she’s been ill too.

While I was there, I told her the news about Bill, and seeing as how she knows her way around French administration and isn’t easily cowed, I set her a task to prove that she is worthy – namely, to make the necessary enquiries.

A brief stop at the Intermarché came next. While I was emptying Caliburn, the black cat came around again. Once more, it let me stroke it and pick it up. Clearly starving, the poor thing, and so I bought a box of Munchies and next time I see it I shall give it a handful. That’s me well and truly hooked, isn’t it?

We had our little social night this evening too, and having made a lucky find in a Charity Shop in Stockton Heath when I was in the UK, I taught a group of French citizens how to play Snakes and Ladders.

Yes  French people playing Snakes and Ladders. There’s nothing like a bit of globalisation, is there? Whatever next? Cricket, maybe.

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Wednesday 17th October 2012 – I WAS LOOKING ….

…. through the stats for the past few years (the records that I have here go back to 2007) and one thing that I noticed is that this recent deterioration in the weather is occurring about 4 weeks earlier than in the previous years.

I hope that it’s not a forewarning because it won’t be very nice if it is.

Yes, last night was absolutely taters – temperature in my room dropped to 15.5°C. Hard to believe that this time last year it was still well into the 20s.

Anyway, a howling wind (good news for the wind turbines) brought the temperature up a few degrees.

This morning, after recording a few stats, I cracked on with my web site. At the moment I’m on my way to see St Andrews, the Scottish Protestant Church in Québec.

And when I finished that I went outside and emptied Caliburn of all of the pylons and the grillage that I had bought the other day.

After lunch I carried on moving stuff off the hard-standing – something that is going to take me years.

One of the difficulties I’m having is actually finding room to put stuff. But all of the old chevrons have been moved (back to where I moved them from 2 years ago) and I’ve also uprooted tons of nettles and entire root systems.

And tomorrow it will be more of the same, I reckon.

Totally frightening, what was growing in the hard-standing.

But there is an added complication in that part of the bank of the side of the hard-standing has collapsed, so I’ll need to dig that all out and then to secure it all somehow, otherwise it will just keep on slipping down and that will be a nuisance, to say the least

This tidying up of all of the nuts and screws and nails and so on is progressing apace. And it’s amazing what I’ve been finding.

It’s also turning out to be quite profitable – so far £0:15 and a token for the spin dryer in the laundry.

Spend, spend, spend, hey? 

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Tuesday 25th September 2012 – WELL …

… I did hear the alarm clock go off this morning.

But I also heard the rain teeming down on the roof and on the windows and so I thought “badger that for a game of cowboys” and stuck my head back down under the quilt.

I did eventually rise up out of my stinking pit – and what a beautiful night’s sleep that was – and after breakfast attacked the footy website until 12:30.

By then the rain had subsided and so the first job was to repair the wheelbarrow that had been out of commission since 2008. A new inner tube that I had bought in Cheze the other weeek and, much to my surprise, I could lay my hands on my tyre levers straight away without even having to look for them.

The Ryobi One-plus air compressor that I bought in Detroit in 2010 did the business and with a length of stud-iron I rigged up an impromptu axle and that was that all fixed up.

While I was having lunch the heavens opened and so, for the first time in probably 6 months or something, I worked inside, in the little cupboard that I’m making at the back of the stairs.

I gave the plastering over the joints of the plasterboard a good sanding down and they are ready to paint now.

wood store les guis virlet puy de dome france>But then the rain stopped again and so back outside,

I ripped up the terracing that I had laid out a couple of months ago using a couple of old pallets, and I used those pallets as a base for the extension to the woodshed.

And from then (about 16:00 until all of 19:30) I unloaded Caliburn of all of the wood.

There’s about 4m² of wood altogether in the pile, and I bet that Aunt Ada Doom could find something narsty in that lot.

But the woodshed isn’t half impressive and there’s room for plenty more under there if I put my mind to it.

At least, under normal circumstances, there’s enough wood here keep me warm for a couple of winters. And if this rain keeps up, because it’s pelting down again, I’ll be needing it sooner than I might think. 

Yes, it’s amazing what you can make out of old pallets and a few sheets of corrugated iron

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Tuesday 28th August 2012 – DESPITE MY …

… early night last night, I somehow managed to sleep right through the alarms this morning.

It was 09:22 when I finally heaved myself out of my stinking pit. It’s been quite a while since I’ve done that, hasn’t it

It was raining too – which makes a nice change. It’s been a while since I’ve had any. But it didn’t rain for long, but long enough to put 100 litres or so into the water butts and I am grateful for that.

The garden and my water butts needed it.

Despite this being a day where I was at home, I didn’t do any pointing at all.

I have done 75% of the painting of the woodwork for the window frames though – two coats on one side and one on the other – I’ll have to do the second one on there before I fit it all in

And while I was waiting for the coats of paint to dry, I was doing other things.

home grown potatoes beans carrots les guis virlet puy de dome franceOne of the things that I did do was to dig up some carrots and pull some beans. Proof, if any were needed, that thanks to all of Rosemary’s help my garden is coming up with the goods..

Add them to the new potatoes that I uprooted the other day, and then some cauliflower that I bought on Saturday, a veggie-burger fried with onion and then some vegan cheese sauce, it was absolutely gorgeous.

What a wonderful tea it all was too!

Another thing that I did was to empty Caliburn out. His load bed is now empty. I’m taking Rosemary to Brico Depot tomorrow and also to Lapeyre so I may well need the space.

I need some more guttering and also some more glass to replace that which … errr … met with an accident, and I need a very narrow springy trowel to replace the one that I broke here on the wall.

Finally, I’ve been tidying up downstairs too looking for my mobile phone which I appear to have mislaid somewhere. I didn’t find that but I did find the missing LED light strips, which pleased me greatly.

I’ve also thrown away about 1 big bin-liner full of rubbish – and there’s plenty more to go at too.

That took me to 19:00 and then I knocked off.

Montlucon tomorrow and then Thursday I can get cracking again.

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Thursday 28th June 2012 – ONE OF THE REASONS …

… and there are many of them, to be sure, as to why I keep a blog is that I can refer back to it and find out when I did something.

I forget all too easily these days what I’ve been up to and when I was up to it – and just remember, before you start laughing, that you will be as old as me too one of these days too.

So I looked back and found that it was exactly a week ago today that I planted the courgette, cucumber, gherkin etc seeds, and sowed some lettuce seed in pots.

And while I was sorting out the herb buckets (those nice heaps of oregano and tarragon have gone – cut down now and hanging up to dry in my attic) I happened to notice that the lettuce were growing.

Blimey! That was quick!

So they had a really good watering, and they need it too in this heat.

And so, out of curiosity, I went to look at the beds where I had planted the courgette etc seeds.

And guess what?

Absolutely! They are rearing their pretty little heads too.

There’s even some beetroot from what I planted a week earlier, but the carrots are once again doing nothing at all.

Anyway, it seems to be all go in the garden again.

I didn’t manage an early start today, unfortunately. It was so hot that at 03:00 I was still up and about and I would probably still be flat out on my back right now if a hornet hadn’t come in at about 08:45 and chased me around the bedroom.

Still, makes a change from Percy Penguin, who doesn’t feature in these pages half as much as she deserves, chasing me around the bedroom.

This afternoon I started to draw up the plans for the next stage of construction work, and began to make a list of the bits that I need. Right on cue, Rosemary rang me up and asked if I would be interested in going to the Brico Depot in Montlucon.

Seeing as how it won’t be very easy getting all of this wood onto Caliburn’s roof rack all on my own, and it’s no skin off my nose whether I go tomorrow or Saturday.

And when I heard that half a day’s gardening was the reward on offer, then that was it, mercenary that I am. It’s a good job I emptied out Caliburn yesterday, wasn’t it?

In between the surveying I dragged out the tabletop washing machine and did a load of washing seeing as I had a pile to do, it was gorgeous and warm, and the water temperature in the home-made 12-volt immersion heater that I use as a dump load for the surplus solar energy was at 60.5°C.

To finish off the day I treated myself to yet another solar shower seeing the temperature of the water in the black plastic solar hearing box had reached 41.5°C. And that was gorgeous too

It’s all go here right now, isn’t it?

    

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Wednesday 21st December 2011 – I DIDN’T GET …

… my rice pudding for tea.

In fact, I was far too busy.

We had 25.5mm of rain throughout the day and during that time I was refitting the temporary roof back on the lean-to. I had intended to start to fit the new roof – the next project around here – but with no let-up in the rain, it was a case of doing what I could before I was soaked to the skin.

That took until about 14:00 when the waterproof overall became waterlogged that I couldn’t move in it (and me with a streaming head cold too). And so that was it – I called it a day.

There’s only so much you can do in weather like that if you don’t want to die of pleurisy.

The rest of the stuff from the UK was emptied out of Caliburn and then he was loaded up with the stuff I was taking to Brussels. As you know, I’ve been invited to spend this Christmas away from home and I need to take some stuff with me.

And having organised all of that, to the best of my ability, I came in here, dried off and warmed up in front of the nice hot wood stove until it was time to go.

Luckily I’d fuelled up at the Carrefour in Riom yesterday because I had no intention of leaving Caliburn’s cab in this kind of weather. The rain streamed down all the way without a break.

I made it as far as Varzy where I flaked out at the side of the road. I have a feeling that this is going to be a very uncomfortable night.

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Sunday 18th December 2011 – I’VE BEEN CHANGING …

… the habits of a lifetime.

It all started this morning when I was up and about at 08:15 and that was without an alarm clock or a phone call as well – and on a Sunday too, the day after coming back from a long journey!

And so having lit a fire up here in the attic to warm myself up, I spent the morning writing the additional notes for the radio programme on Tuesday

Later on, I was out working, and that’s a rare event for a Sunday too!

I started to unload Caliburn but that really didn’t make much headway as there are space issues. But all of the scaffolding is off and stacked and much of the heavy stuff has been removed.

The weather clouded over too, and so I took advantage of what light there was to change Caliburn’s front tyres and now he has his winter boots on. And I’m glad I did too as the ones that were on there were rather thin to say the least.

Off to Terry and Liz’s next to drop off a load of stuff and you have no idea how much better Caliburn was handling with his winter tyres. And I’m glad that I fitted them too, because once I got to about Gouttieres it started to snow and it was snowing heavily by the time that I was back home

Now I’m going to bed as I still have this streaming head cold that I picked up in the UK and an early night cuddled up in this warm room (and aren’t I impressed with my new fire?) under the quilt will do me the world of good.

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Thursday 1st December 2011 – GOING TO BED EARLY …

… does you no good at all if you roll over onto your staples at 04:00. It’s flaming painful and you can’t go back to sleep again.

And so I was up early again and breakfasted, and then I went out to cut more wood. That’s a couple more of the old chevrons and the tree trunks from 2 years ago all ready to burn in my nice new wood stove, with which I am almost as impressed as I am with my galvanised steel dustbin.

But then I had another idea and I cleared a space near the big front gates and laid out a couple of pallets. And then I moved one of the wood piles – the one that was at the side of the lean-to. That’s now on the pallets right at the front of the house and will be easy to get to in the winter, whenever that might be.

That pile of wood was formerly at the side of the lean-to on a concrete pad that was formerly the base of a chicken coop. This concrete hardstanding is now covered with plastic roof tiles – I did a safari around the garden and hunted down all that I can find ready for doing that roof, whenever that might be.

I also took out the plywood from the back of Caliburn and I’ve stood that upon the concrete pad. Even though it’s for exterior use, I’ve covered it up with a tarpaulin to protect it for a while from the weather.

All that’s left in Caliburn is the window and that’s rather heavy. But I have a cunning plan for that, more of which anon.

When it went dark I fetched a shelving unit that I had forgotten and I have put it in what will be the bathroom. I’ve started making a tour of the upper floors rescuing tools and so on, so that I know where everything might be.

But that’s not so easy as there’s just so much stuff. I really ought to have a good tidy up sometime.

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Monday 28th November 2011 – I HAD VISITORS TODAY.

Here I was – up early and breakfasted, and tidying up (for a change) in my little room when the ‘phone rang. “If we come and raise up the wind turbine can we take the rest of the scaffolding?”

And so that put an end to the tidying up (which was a shame as it’s not often that I’m in the mood for tidying up) and I went up and prepared everything.

It didn’t take long for the three of us to put the wind turbine properly into position and the scaffolding has now gone, and there’s even a roof of sorts on the lean-to (a few sheets of corrugated iron and a tarpaulin) although I don’t know why. We’ve not had any rain here since 7th November.

It was then that I noticed that the wind turbine pole must have been rotated while we were raising it, as the bracket that holds the wire guy ropes is now the wrong way round. And I’ve no idea at all what I can do about that now.

I bet that you are thinking “great. He can go ahead and put the roof on the lean-to now” – but I can’t. I need the scaffolding for that, don’t I?

Caliburn is now emptied ready for a shopping trip to Montlucon tomorrow, and I’ve also done some more work cutting down the fir trees to a reasonable height. This time I’ve managed to afford falling trees, falling off the ladder and the like.

But anyway I’ve managed a good day’s work.

Up here this evening I’ve had the new fire working. It was difficult to get it to work properly but that’s the kind of thing that will surely come with practice.

But one thing and another – a bunch of herring hanging up in this room would have benefited from my efforts.

>But I gave someone quite a hard time today. I’m getting all bad-tempered and tetchy in my old age. And then I remembered that yesterday I gave the President of the football club a real hard time. That’s not like me at all these days.

And then I had a flashback – back to 1987 and my car accident when I suffered a fractured skull and how that was the beginning of the end and how bad-tempered and miserable I became for quite a good while after that. And now I’ve just fallen off a ladder and landed on my head as you know.

Don’t tell me that I’m going to be going through all of this again. It was bad enough back then!

As Terry Venables once famously said – “if history repeats itself then we can expect the same thing again”. That’s rather a depressing thought.

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Monday 17th October 2011 – THERE’S A LOT …

… to be said for being up at 08:00 in the morning at the first tinkling of the alarm clock. It  means that by the time you have breakfasted and done your 3 hours on the laptop, there’s still two hours before lunch.

And it’s just as well because it took me a while to empty Caliburn ready for this furniture removal, and then there was still some time to do another little job that I’m thinking of.

You might recall that the 12-volt immersion heater has stopped working and had something of a meltdown. I had a good look at it and what has happened was that the heater element has folded downwards and shorted out against the metal sides. This has

  1. produced a short-circuit that has melted all of the plastic causing the wires to short out (and why the fuse didn’t blow is a mystery to me)
  2. the arc that was created has burnt a hole in the bottom of the drum.

Despite the catastrophe (and it could have been 10 times worse if the insulation had caught fire) I was still impressed with the heat that must have been generated from just 500 watts and my surplus energy.

But at least now I know why the heater elements are fitted vertically and not horizontally – it stops them shorting out like this. The issue with that though is that you need running water into the tank to make sure that when you drain the tank it refills instantly so that the element is never exposed to the air.

That won’t work for me because of course I don’t have running water. My solution would be to go for a non-conductive material like plastic, it I would find a plastic tank that would take water up to 70°C.

Anyway, the result of this is that I have no dump load for my surplus energy and so I had a cunning plan.

>When I was in Canada last year I found some black sockets formy 12-volt circuit and I bought a dozen with the idea that they would be so different in appearance to the usual white ones that it would evidently have some significance.

12 volt fridge dump load les guis virlet puy de dome franceI cut out the wire from the dump load controller and put the black socket into the line. You can see it at the top right of this photo.

As winter approaches and the solar energy begins to die down, I’ve unplugged the fridge from the main circuit because I no longer have the charge to run it 24 hours. That will have to wait for next Spring.

What I’ve done is to move the fridge into where the water heater was and plugged it into the black socket. That way, from now on it will only switch on when there is surplus energy which isn’t too bad in winter. When there isn’t enough sun to run the fridge it will be cold enough to do without it anyway

It’s only 75 watts instead of 500 that the water heater gave out but nevertheless it’s better than nothing and it’s something useful to do with the surplus current.

What I also intend to do in the long run for the coming winter is when I wire in the big Studer inverter that I have, I’ll use the 600-watt one wired into the dump load circuit and couple up a small 400-watt oil heater that I have. I’ll put that in my room up here and it’ll take the chill off the place in the winter whenever we have plenty of sun.

This furniture removal this afternoon – well, I won’t say too much about it except that I was there at 14:00 as planned and Caliburn was all loaded before 14:30. For the 90km drive, we finally arrived at the house at … errr … 17:40 and it wasn’t until 18:10 that we got back under way.

So never mind the plans that I had about doing the washing and so on – we were lucky to make the Anglo-French meeting tonight in time. Still, what can you do in circumstances like this?

And so tomorrow I’m hoping to be back up the wall again. It might be finished this week – you never know.

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Friday 29th July 2011 – AFTER THE EXERTIONS OF YESTERDAY …

… it will come as no surprise for you to learn that this morning I was up at … errr … 06:48.

However, that was to go for a gypsy’s. No way I was staying up at that time of the morning. 09:30 was a much more realistic time to haul myself out of my stinking pit.

After breakfast I was back on the computer with the website – to see how far I can get with that today.

Later I was outside working on the wiring in the barn – there were a few things I needed to do like install some crocodile clips for charging spare batteries and the like. And once I had accomplished that, I set too and emptied, cleaned and tidied Caliburn.

After that, I came up here for an early finish and watched a film. And I’m annoyed with myself now!

That’s because when I was emptying out the apartment in Brussels earlier this year I threw away a huge pile of videotapes with loads of good stuff on them, on the grounds that they were recorded in Long Play.

But remember that 12-volt TV/video player that I bought at that brocante a while back? I’ve just discovered this evening that it plays Long Play tapes.

Hardly any surprise that I’m upset!

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Wednesday 20th July 2011 – NOTHING MUCH HAPPENED …

… today. But that still doesn’t stop me being totally exhausted.

Apart from the usual computing in the morning, I spent the afternoon finishing off the unloading of Caliburn.

And it took all afternoon too. I had to move the trailer and then move a few things around in the barn, but everything is in there now and all tidy too, including the tiles that we never used on the bathroom back at Expo. And they were a weight to go slinging around – that I promise you.

What didn’t help was the torrential rain that we had. Marianne – my friend from Brussels – had seen the weather forecast and decided not to come down. And a wise decision that was too.

I finished off the afternoon by tidying the barn a little where I had been working the other day – and I still can’t find my missing data head. Ahh well. It’ll turn up sooner or later, I suppose, just like everything else that I have lost always does.

Usually about 3 days after I’ve bought its replacement.

But now at least Caliburn is ready to do the return trip to Brussels on Saturday evening. Whether or not I am is another matter completely.

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Tuesday 19th July 2011 – AND SO THIS MORNING …

… I had arranged for Liz to ring me at 09:30.

But it was totally unnecessary – no-one could sleep through the cacophony of the torrential rainstorm crashing down onto the aluminium sheeting that used to be the roof of the caravan. It was impressive.

But anyway, I toddled off to Marcillat where we dealt with the recordings for Radio Tartasse without too much difficulty but the recordings for Radio Arverne were cancelled. I haven’t mentioned it, but we have had another death in our little circle – the daughter of someone who we know. Aged 24 – killed in a car accident. The funeral was today and so that was that.

Some of Caliburn is now unloaded – it’s taken me ages because I need to go through the boxes to see what is in there and to rescue some books and videos that ought to be up here – stuff that I’ve missed desperately for 11 years, reference books and all that kind of thing as well as some decent films that need copying onto DVD.

I’ve also collected my thousands of LPs and they will be recorded sooner or later onto *.mp3. I bought a computer record-deck a couple of years ago just for this purpose.

Tomorrow, with a bit of luck, God’s help and a bobby I’ll be finishing off the emptying of Caliburn ready to go back to Brussels for the final load.

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Monday 18th July 2011 – AND SO I’VE BEEN AND GORN …

… and now I’m back after my mega-voyage of this weekend.

Yesterday evening was, as you know, quite an exciting dash through the wilds of rural Burgundy, but this morning it was a totally different story.

There were hay lorries, tractors, all kinds of things on the roads. No wonder I like to travel at night. And the final straw was near Moulins where they had part of the N7 closed for resurfacing – it took an hour to travel 6 kms, such is the traffic on the N7.

Bback home here though, I encountered all of the storms and the rain. I’m not unloading Caliburn in this weather.

And the solar panels on the end of the barn, those that I fitted before I went? They are producing about 20% more than those on the roof of the Luton Transit. I was hoping for more but never mind – it’ll do.

I was however back home in time to attend Lieneke’s party, where I spent most of my time chatting to Tyas, Simon and Desiree. It’s been a while since I’ve seen them.

And as you might expect, it all caught up with me later so I came home and crashed out. No surprise here.

And do you know what? I have to go back and do exactly the same thing next weekend too!

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Tuesday 5th July 2011 – I managed to make …

anti leaf guttering les guis virlet puy de dome france… the time to do the guttering this afternoon. All of that netting stuff that I bought for €1:00 per roll seems to work fine – there’s still some left on the roll after doing this – it didn’t take much.

I was going to hold it on with cable ties but while I was looking for something else I came across (and how often does this happen?)a reel of that green plastic stuff that is used for fastening plants to canes. That did the job exactly how it ought to be done, and this should hopefully prevent all kinds of nonsense falling into the guttering, and keep the internal filter much cleaner.

But the proof of the pudding is the eating and what we need to test it is some rain, but there’s no hope of that for a while. It was another glorious day here. My solar shower reached 44.5°C so I had another scalding shower (at 19:00 it was still 42.5°C) and the water in the immersion heater went off the scale – that is, more that 70°C. In fact the washing up water was scalding as well – at 22:00 when I washed up the water in there was 64°C.

But there’s no doubt that my hot water – at least in summer – seems to be working fine. In the winter of course I’ll be having one of those stoves that heats, cooks, and boils water. But that’s a long time off just now.

This morning I emptied Caliburn of all of the stuff that was still inside (and that was about half a tonne) and took the solar panel off his roof. And then Marc and I went to Montlucon for the plasterboard for Marianne’s house. It’s a good job that Caliburn has a good roof rack as 9 sheets of 13mm plasterboard weighs a tonne – that’s the reason I use 10mm plasterboard – remember I’m on my own and I have to manoeuvre it around myself. 10mm is of course lighter.

But at Marianne’s she showed me today’s local newspaper. There’s one of my photos in all of its glory, suitably cropped of course. But I wish that one day they will put my name up in lights.

And in other news, another event that I have been foretelling has finally come to pass. A Dutch court has ruled in effect that the Dutch Army was responsible to a large degree for the massacre at Srebenica.

If you don’t know about this, Srebenica was advertised constantly as being a “safe haven” for Moslems during the Civil War in ex-Yugoslavia (although why a safe haven was declared and why the UN didn’t insist on all of ex-Yugoslavia being a safe haven and enforcing that is something that I never really could grasp), and it was guarded by part of the Dutch Army. And when the Serbs invaded the area en masse the Moslems flocked en masse to Srebenica and what they were promised was safety.

However, when the Serbs arrived, the Dutch commander drank a toast to them and then kicked all the Muslems – even those working for the Dutch Army – out and stood by watching as they were all slaughtered. The Dutch commander said that he was outnumbered and outgunned and didn’t want to needlessly risk the lives of his soldiers. But “needlessly” – when over 8,000 civilians were being slaughtered before their very eyes – that was always a shameful comment. The Dutch soldiers never even fired a single bullet to protect these civilians.

Everyone (well, everyone except Yours Truly) is said to be surprised by this verdict today. I’m surprised too – but surprised that it took all this time for the correct verdict to be given.

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