Poland roundup - a 2nd attempt !

The photo just posted was of the parents of Pope John Paul II which has been erected in front of the Pilgrim Hostel at Czestochowa. I wonder if anyone is keeping a log of the statues (JP2 related) as they are erected across the country?

Poland - a roundup

A lack of "hotspots" or internet access has prevented my very good intention of blogging my way across Poland with our parish pilgrimage/holiday last week. Now back in London I need to collate the pictures and look back at our itinery so that the remaining days of our trip can be documented. One of our number will be writing it all up from her journal (after she has celebrated her birthday on the 16th) and all will be given to Dunadan (our parish web man) for inclusion on the parish website. In the meantime here are a couple of pictures taken during the final days of the trip.

British and blogging

This little piece appears in today's Sunday Telegraph. No doubt bloggers across the UK will oblige !

Home news
A great day to be British and blogging
On Tuesday, English Heritage and the National Trust want as many people as possible to upload a diary of their day to historymatters.org.uk, to create a permanent record of "an ordinary Tuesday" in the Britain of 2006.

Poland - Tuesday

A whole day out of the City. An early start took us to the Shrine of Our Lady of Ludzimierz - the Queen of the Lowlands, dating back to the 14th century. When during the coronation of the statue on 15th August 1963 the sceptre fell out of Our Lady's hand the then Bishop of Cracow Karol Woytyla picked it up setting the rumours amongst the local highlanders that a high position awaited him in the future. After mass at the shrine we sepnt time in the grounds where a statue has been erected then to Zakopane for lunch and free time to explore.

Before leaving the area we visited Our Lady of Fatima's Church which has been built as a votive offering by local people for Pope John Paul's survival from the assasin's bullet. Again a statue has been erected here (to which has been added in recent time SANTO SUBITO).

This is the view from the hotel window. Just at the endge of the old city wall this band of green is what seperates us from the busy road which also has trams running up and down.

This photo got here via email from my mobile phone - so apologies for the quality (or lack of it!)

We shall keep on with the experiments as the days go by.

It is Sunday and already we have visited the Basilica at Mogila and the Church at Nova Huta. This pm we are to visit the Divine Mercy Shrine for Mass. At the hotel it is possbile to purchase wireless connectivity for periods of 2 or 24 hours so in theory I should be able to post to the blog as we go along! Quite something to see as we visited the churches today. Large numbers of the faithful making their way to mass - all ages. Outside the buildings many on their knees during the service and inside the space crowded. Apparently it is only 40+% who are practising these days but the mass times advertised and the numbers would suggest otherwise. I shall hope to add some pictures but I realise that I have not brought the cable to connect camera to computer. I will have to use the phone and email to myself the photos - perhaps too technical but we'll try.

As others see us !

I recently purchased (as a birthday gift for a friend) Rupert Everett's autobiography "Red Carpets and other banana skins" in which he writes about the funeral of Paula Yates.
"The pallbearers, big-fingered Mafioso types, lumbered from their seats and picked up the coffin as Paula broke into a final chorus and her physical remains left the church to be burnt at the crematorium." This was not as I remembered the event at all. What is equally surprising is the perhaps more important detail - the date! He prefaced the above remarks with the following "One October morning in 1997 the phone rang - it was Bob, ’Paula’s dead,’ he said, ‘and you’ve got to come and read a poem at the funeral. She wouldn’t forgive you if you don’t.’[Chapter 14 Pages 132 - 134]As I read this I realised that the funeral had taken place not in the October of 1997 but on September 23rd 2000 (as the many newspapers testify) There would certainly be no other reason for my photo on the cover of Hello magazine in October 2000! This is all a nonsense of course. What is however interesting to note is that in reviews of the book in various newspapers other inacuracies have come to light. Presumably at Little Brown Book Group proof-reading does not include checks for factual accuracy!