It progress.

Well, since my IT wizard returned from Spain, I have discovered how to post my blog from my iPad. This is a great step forward as it means I no longer have to wait until the laptop is available in order to post my ramblings. However, I am still having some problems working out how to add photos. None of my usual techniques seem to work. And I fear that the photos I might, perhaps, be able to post today will come out huge.

Anyway, This is the photo from the report on New York Fashion Week with models in hijabs, the one I didn't manage to attach to yesterday's post.



I have often gone on at some length about my feelings about leaving the EU. There are rumblings that projects such as Erasmus will no longer be available to UK students, thus reducing their chances of living and studying abroad. In yesterday's paper I came across something interesting. Andrew Solomon, writing in the Guardian about the importance of travel as an educational tool ,said a mass of things that I totally agreed with. In particular, he expressed the view that if every single person had to go and live two weeks in another country, diplomacy would improve immensely. How can you understand a nation and its ways if you have never lived there? And how can you understand your own country if you have nothing with which to compare it?

I was struck by his comments about talking to the former US secretary of defense Robert McNamara, when that gentleman was in his eighties. To begin with nobody at the time listened to the Asia experts before the Vietnam mess started. That sounds like a remarkably familiar story! And then there was
the fact that the Vietnamese and the American diplomats all understood everything differently. "We argued the language of war," said McNamara, "which I wrongly thought was a universal language."

That says so much.

Here is a link to the whole excellent article.

And finally this is a photo I took while out running this morning. The mist had a curious arch effect, a kind of albino rainbow, a rainbow before the colour was added. My sister and I have decided that this should now be called a "mistbow". I see no reason why we should not add words to the English language.

However, having looked at the preview of this post, I think I have still not solved the photo problem.