A million candles burning ...*

So tired tonight after the usual early Thursday in the supermarket, but the good news is that when I got back, about 9.20am, the plumber had just about finished fixing our kitchen tap (it was sticking horribly and then causing water hammer). Before he left, he asked to check out the site of the defunct whirligig and told us that if he's not too busy in the morning he'll bring one round from the store and install it, probably with some drilling and some quick-dry concrete. (He works for the same all-trades firm we rang yesterday). And once again I was struck by the benefits of living and being known in a smallish community, and by the consideration shown by the people who come to do jobs and show an interest in the problems of old houses - it seems much harder to get hold of people in the city. 

Blipping one of two candles we lit tonight, with this memory: When I was in primary school in the early 1950s, when we all stood by our desks every morning to say the Lord's Prayer, I became aware that a girl with whom I was friendly - a clever girl, it turned out as we progressed through secondary school - whose desk was just behind mine. While I was dutifully repeating Our Father ... I could hear her, quietly repeating far more words very quickly, an undertone to the rhythm of 39 other children praying. One day I asked her what she was saying on these occasions. Quick as a flash the reply: "Oh - the Teddy Bears' Picnic". At the time I thought she was bold and rebellious, and I was impressed.

And it was many, many years before it came to me that she was repeating the Shema, and that she'd probably been told by her parents not to make a fuss about it, starting school 5 years after the discovery of the horrors of the Holocaust. We never knew, we never asked.

But after seeing tonight's news it seems obvious that we must keep knowing, and keep asking. 

* A million candles burning for the help that never came ...Leonard Cohen.