Morning star

Fine, bright sky when I woke this (Tuesday) morning, with Venus shining bright and the sky just lightening to the east.

Not something I catch very often here at Epsom and I was sufficiently impressed to get out the monocular the better to inspect Venus. Orion up and to the right.

From our upstairs front window that is, which points roughly south east. Nothing much to be seen in the other direction, from the study window.

PS 1: Pacific time or something on the time stamp. I guess the central database likes to have just the one clock, just the one time on the go at any one time.

PS 2: regarding reference 2, I have never been involved in violence, so I cannot speak for those who have, but for myself, I do not find the 'unvarnished truth' which some are seeking in Northern Ireland very helpful at times of difficulty. Even supposing such a thing exists. I think it a great pity we cannot just shut the box on this one, mostly events which took place more than thirty years ago, and walk away from it, to the future. Is it an English disease, this inability to close things down and move forward - an inability which reduces our planning process to a job creation scheme for lawyers? Or perhaps a disease of wishy-washy liberals, the chattering classes, the wokes more generally? All of which opens the door to the likes of Trump and Farage who claim that they can cut through all this nonsense and get on.

Against that, a lot of other countries with violence in their pasts have found 'truth and reconciliation commissions' helpful. Maybe painful, but cathartic.

I associate to the novels of John McGahern, some of whose novels offer disturbing glimpses of the legacy of the Troubles in northern parts of southern Ireland, that is to say Eire.

References

Reference 1: https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/night/.

Reference 2: Access to files from Northern Irish Troubles could unlock ‘unvarnished truth’: Chief of reconciliation body will try to ‘maximise disclosure’ as UK and Ireland overhaul much-criticised legacy law - Jude Webber, Financial Times - 2025.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_truth_and_reconciliation_commissions. From which I learn that we have had, perhaps still have, such a thing.

Reference 4: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/search?q=mcgahern. The wrong one.

Reference 5: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/search?q=mcgahern. The right one.