EU chief Frans Timmermans' 'love letter' to Britain about Brexit

'You have decided to leave.
It breaks my heart, but I respect that decision.
You were in two minds about it, like you have always been in two minds about the EU.
I wish you had stuck to that attitude, it served you well and it kept all of us in better shape.
Was it necessary to force the issue?
Not at all.
But you did.
And the sad thing is, I see it is hurting you.
Because the two minds will still be there, even after you have left.
In the process so much unnecessary damage has been done to you, and all of us.
And I fear more will follow.

'Truth be told, I felt deeply hurt when you decided to leave.
Three years later I am just sad that a member of our family wants to sever our ties.
But at the same time I find comfort in the thought that family ties can never really be severed.
We’re not going away and you will always be welcome to come back.'

Christmas without tinsel.

"Sir, – At this time of year, families are dreaming of seeing their loved ones. The loved ones coming back by sea, or touching down on tarmac, flowing through the arrivals lounge of airports, warm-cheeked and teary-eyed, breaking the barrier to the warm homely arms of childhood. Or coming by car, snapping the car doors shut for a while and walking in the front door of old familiarity – the family home. This is miracle-making.

Eighteen years ago this Christmas, my first child of three, my daughter was very ill and she died early in the New Year. It was a meteorite falling on a family that was already rocked by loss and absence. Since then, our family has been cruelly pared back to one, myself, the mother, living alone at home.

At night I sleep to the rattles of an empty house. Even the wind has a faraway cry when it rattles at the window. My three children, my daughter and two sons died from Cystic Fibrosis, a genetic disease of the lungs. They lived a full and spirited life together, their illness did not define them. They were witty, intelligent, and gifted with homegrown talents that filled this home with music and liveliness. They expressed their true selves to their world of friends, and gave of themselves freely and honestly.

Losing a child is like having your heart torn out and your stomach emptied. Grief gets in the way of daylight, not to mention the nocturnal dark.

Christmas is a black surround, without tinsel, while the masses are plumping up the shopping streets.

But grief can be another day on the wheel, when paradoxically a blue sky can unveil and a white egret appears in the branch. I have named him Doy after my youngest son, whose pet name was Doy. He will fly and land with me as I walk beside the river in the valley behind our home.
Before Doy died, his dark eyes looked ahead and he said, “Look for me in the trees. I will be there in the trees.” – Yours, etc,

KATHLEEN KEYES,

Bray, Co Wicklow."

- ‘After the death of my children, Christmas is a black surround, without tinsel’

- Sunday with Miriam Sunday 22 December 2019 - Sunday with Miriam - RTÉ Radio 1 - Kathleen Keyes reads a letter.

За что я люблю Англию...

- "There's something about the British psyche - it's a matter of pride not to spend a lot of money on clothes." Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman On how British women dress.
"Есть нечто особенное в английской психике - это предмет гордости не тратить много денег на одежду. Vogue редактор Александра Шульман о том, как одеваются британские женщины.

The Farewell (2019 film).

The Farewell premieres in Russia today so I asked my Dad to record a greeting for the audience in Russian. YES, he speaks Russian - one of many things @tzima8 wanted to include in the film that didn’t make it. But seriously, how cute is he? 😍 pic.twitter.com/hybjF4iAYr

— Lulu Wang (@thumbelulu) October 10, 2019

You Were Never Really Here movie (2018) .

- You Were Never Really Here movie review (2018) | Roger Ebert
In her films, Ramsay digs into the in-between spaces, the voids and vacuums where marginalized or inarticulate people try to understand the codes of a baffling world.
They're outsiders.
They're survivors.

Joker.

- Значение слова ханжа. Что значит ханжество
Нужно одурять себя водкой, картами, сплетнями, надо подличать, ханжить или десятки лет чертить и чертить, чтобы не замечать всего ужаса, который прячется в этих домах.
А.П. Чехов. «Моя жизнь» (1896)

- Joker (2019 film) - Wikipedia
The comic-book villain as Method psycho, a troublemaker so intense in his cuckoo hostility that even as you're gawking at his violence, you still feel his pain.

- The Search for a New Humility: Václav Havel on Reclaiming Our Human Interconnectedness in a Globalized Yet Divided World | Brain Pickings
“Our respect for other people… can only grow from a humble respect for the cosmic order and from an awareness that we are a part of it… and that nothing of what we do is lost, but rather becomes part of the eternal memory of being.”

Michel Roux bans diners from photographing their food for Instagram | News | The Times

Michel Roux bans diners from photographing their food for Instagram | News | The Times

Lucinda Ebersole.

- Lucinda Ebersole - Wikipedia
- Lucindaville

Neil Diamond - The Story Of My Life.

The story of my life is very plain to read
It starts the day you came
And ends the day you leave
The story of my life begins and ends with you
The names are still the same
And the story's still the truth
I was alone.
You found me waiting and made me your own
I was afraid
That somehow I never could be a man that you wanted of me You're the story of my life, and every word is true
Each chapter sings your name
Each page begins with you
It's the story of our times and never letting go If I die today, I wannted yo to know
Stay with me here
Share with me, care with me Stay and be near
And when it began I'd lie awake every night
Just knowing somewhere deep inside
That our affair just might write
The story of my life is very plain to read
It starts the day you came
It ends the day you leave

How Freud helps me to mourn my husband’s death.

- How Freud helps me to mourn my husband’s death | Life and style | The Guardian
Augusta Ford was used to dealing with grief and loss in her work as a psychotherapist. Then her husband died. Would her years of experience help in her own grieving process?
One mild December day in 2013, mid-afternoon, he was diagnosed with a symptomless cancer. I had finished with my patients and checked my phone at 5.30pm to see what we were doing for supper. I knew he had been to see our GP the previous day seeking an ultrasound for a sore knee (the result of decades of intense sport and exercise) but had not quite registered that he had also asked our doctor to feel an odd little pearl-sized lump in his neck. His text read: “5.30pm need you to see Dr with me. Please come.”
I ran from our house to the surgery, without a coat, leaving music practice undone and my children unexpectedly playing Minecraft on a school night. Twenty minutes later, our life was completely different.

I was a strong Brexiteer. Now we must swallow our pride and think again.

- I was a strong Brexiteer. Now we must swallow our pride and think again | openDemocracy
Peter Oborne writes here in his personal capacity:
- There’s zero chance of a sensible Brexit amidst the pandemonium and hysteria at Westminster just now
- Take Tusk’s offer
- The economic arguments for Brexit have been destroyed by a series of shattering blows
- Britain’s departure from the EU will be as great a disaster for our country as the over-mighty unions were in the 1960s and 1970s
- When hedge-fund managers and the Communist Party see eye-to-eye on any question, it’s time to be concerned
- Well done Britain for challenging remote oligarchs based in Brussels
- The European Union is not a dictatorship
- The UK will be weaker and more isolated
- Like almost everybody else I underestimated the importance of the Good Friday Agreement
- Phrases such as 'vassal state', 'empire' and 'supplicant' do not even remotely characterise our relation with Europe

Спросите любого психолога, когда худшее время для принятия решения.
Они согласны, что это когда вы страдаете от истощения и эмоционального коллапса.

...Sometimes politicians make promises that they know they are powerless to deliver.
At other times they use Brussels as a whipping-boy for unpopular decisions they would have made in any case.
This has created a real problem for democracy across Europe.
Not just in Britain.

I come back, then, to a proposition that sounds lame – as quiet good sense so often does.
Just this, and this alone.
Suspending Brexit will be greatly preferable to the alternative.
How many important decisions in our own lives, too, have had to be taken on such a chilly and unexciting consideration?
It’s time for a long pause.

How the UK lost Brexit battle.

- How the UK lost Brexit battle – POLITICO

I think it is pretty much all over, except for the shouting.
With yesterdays indicative votes in the HoC, my personal belief is that we’ll end up in a no-deal Brexit.
There is no clear road forward. TM’s deal is dead. Only two options remain, no-deal or an extension.

An extension would require elections to the EP.
Those elections would automatically turn into something akin to a put-it-to-the-people-vote, something the Brexiteers cannot/will not allow.

The 10 Best Haruki Murakami Books

The 10 Best Haruki Murakami Books

Mozart. Requiem. Conductor Theodore Curentis.

- Mozart. Requiem. Conductor Theodore Curentis. Concert in Moscow on June 17, 2017. - YouTube
Аудио-запись концерта в Московской филармонии 17 июня 2017 года. (любительская, часть сносная, часть хорошая)
Уникальность именно этого исполнения несомненна. Даже в Зальцбурге, месяцем позже, не было такого космического темпа и Света.
И еще в Зальцбурге не было нового речитатива.
на 41 мин.18 сек.
Lacrimosa dies illa - на 20 мин.50 сек.
Финальная фуга - на 46 мин.48 сек.
(Использованы фотографии концерта в июне 2017.)
-----------------------------
Audio recording of the concert at the Moscow Philharmonic on June 17, 2017. (amateur, part tolerable, part good)
The uniqueness of this particular performance is beyond doubt.
Even in Salzburg, a month later, there was no such cosmic pace and Light.
And in Salzburg there was no new recitative.
for 41 min. 18 sec.
Lacrimosa dies illa - for 20 min.50 sec.
The final fugue - for 46 min.48 seconds.
(Photos of the concert were used in June.)

Villa Sgaravatti, Albano Terme, Northern Italy, April 2017

Villa Sgaravatti, Albano Terme, Northern Italy, April 2017