A prayer for Marie Colvin

My heart hasn't been in the blipping today, partly because I seem to have come down with a bug not helped by two consecutive nights working until 3 am. But the real reason was the death in Syria of Marie Colvin, the Sunday Times journalist. A few years ago we chatted the evening away at a boozy party and I liked her a lot. She was born the same year as me and our paths had crossed before in a quite different context when I was doing some work on Iraq.

There will be a lot of news coverage in the next few days that will tell you what a gutsy lady she was. Journalists are not flavour of the month just now but it's worth remembering that some of them, like Marie, are prepared to endure extreme danger in order to report the plight of the victims in this world. Marie was such a journalist. She really believed in what she was doing and always sided with the oppressed. I'm glad to have met her.

I had no idea what to blip tonight but coming up to bed I passed this old Turkish prayer rug hanging in the stair well. I bought it many years ago on a trip to Anatolia. It's more than a hundreds years old so far too special to walk on. I have books on Islamic carpets and if you know the styles and patterns you can identify exactly where they were made. The little triangle in the corner is a tulip. I'm not a religious man but maybe I was thinking of Marie Colvin when I passed it tonight and gave it a little pat.