Rigmarole. The consequences of war.

 Logging last night into a series we’ve been watching on Netflix, we hesitated too long and a screensaver popped up. This led to our having to go through some of the procedure once again, “What a rigmarole!”, we commented huffily. This led us to wonder where the word “rigmarole” came from. That’s the sort of people we are. It’s the consequence of having spent a good part of our life working with foreign languages; you find yourself wondering about the origin of expressions. This is what I found about “rigmarole”:

“In the Middle Ages, the term Rageman or Ragman referred to a game in which a player randomly selected a string attached to a roll of verses and read the selected verse. The roll was called a Ragman roll after a fictional king purported to be the author of the verses. By the 16th century, ragman and ragman roll were being used figuratively to mean "a list or catalog." Both terms fell out of written use, but ragman roll persisted in speech, and in the 18th century it resurfaced in writing as rigmarole, with the meaning "a succession of confused, meaningless, or foolish statements." In the mid-19th century rigmarole (also spelled rigamarole, reflecting its common pronunciation) acquired the sense referring to a complex and ritualistic procedure.”

There you go. 

Now for more serious stuff. 

 

The UK and the US seem determined to continue putting the world at risk:

“Yemen’s Houthis said US and British airstrikes “will not deter us” and vowed a response after dozens of targets were hit in retaliation for the Iran-backed rebels’ repeated Red Sea attacks, AFP reports.

The joint air raids in Yemen late Saturday followed a separate wave of unilateral American strikes against Iran-linked targets in Iraq and Syria in response to a drone attack that killed three US soldiers in Jordan.”

And here is a photo of the Great Mosque in Gaza City, as it had stood since the 7th century before the current conflict began.

 

And here is the same Great Mosque as it was at the end of January this year.

Of course its destruction is less important than the horrific loss of life but ancient buildings like this one are part of the world heritage. War, especially modern warfare, destroys such things. The Great Mosque is more important, naturally, to the people of Palestine than it is to the rest of us. However, even though we may not all visit the places of cultural history and beauty, it is somehow reassuring to know that they exist in the world. Unless we can put an end to the madness such acts of vandalism will continue.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone.