Frohe Weihnachten

Another quick return to Blip to wish everyone on this wonderful site a very Merry & Peaceful Christmas.

As I have been a multiple Blip-Sinner in the last 9 months or so of the Brexit Twitter War 1.0, I have turned off comments until I get my life sorted again. I have o try & learn to write a sentence without a string of *****s in it. I even managed to get banned from Twitter at about 8:00 pm of 12th December vote night for my language. Strangely in a comment to a pure 100% self-appointed racist! All my ***words to PMs MPs, Bishops, Archbishops, Captains of Industry, Journalists & the like all went through unchallenged!

A Battle lost but not a War.

While I won't forgive the 1,000s of enemies on Twitter, I am more than happy to stretch out that Christmas Eve gesture, seen in the WWI trenches & resulted in the famous football game, to all Blipers as I know everyone here has at least some heart. It has been a source of comfort throughout knowing this haven of peace & friendship is there for the worst case.

Have a wonderful day tomorrow. We here have already done & dusted the main event. Fried/boiled spicy Balkan/Hungarian sausages with mashed potato & instead of normal sauerkraut, leftover Kohlrabi in a creme fraiche sauce. This dish (with normal German sausages) is still the traditional Christmas Eve dish in around 30% of German homes. The spicy sausages we have are those my wife grew up with based on her southern German Danube migrant family origins in the later Yugoslavia which was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire that recruited these waterlogged field experienced farmers to recover very rich agricultural land in those parts. Called the Danube Swabians, a German-speaking folk who fled the advancing Russians in 1944 to Austria. Those who remained were wiped out.  My father-in-law, aged 10, was in charge of his family's cart & horse 10-day journey to Austria - mother, grandmother, younger brother & anything that they could get in the cart. Father had already been conscripted as a medic on the northern Russian front & didn't return until 1946, 6ft tall & weighing under 50kg.

The photo is of our near neighbour's carpentry workshop show window taken this evening after a wet & windy dog walk. They specialise in stairs & are main contractors to nearby large, very expensive, organic house builders, BauFritz, who also have houses in the UK. So almost sure there is a Boneberger staircase somewhere in the UK. There is one in our house and excellent it is too.

Thought it was appropriate that a  carpenter involved in today's Blip. A simple, gentle, peaceful man who took responsibility for a pregnant woman about to change our world.

What is the price of peace in Europe & indeed the world, especially today, the part where Jesus was born?