Slim Pickings

Ilkley Food Market on another very wet day. When I passed, the traders outnumbered the punters by a ratio of about five to one.

Taking a run, not carrying any money, I felt the need to apologise for the weather. That must have been no fun at all.

PS PS I wanted to record on the journal that I watched Quo Vadis, Aida, a film based upon the appalling events that overtook Srebrenica in 1995. It's a searingly compelling movie experience. I can't answer the question as to why I watched a film that was certain to leave me filled with so much anger and sorrow. Perhaps it's out of a sense of duty, or respect for those lives that were lost, and their families. Perhaps it's out of guilt for the fact that this act of genocide occurred during my children's lifetime, in mainland Europe, not much more than a thousand miles away from London, a place you could drive to in less than twenty-four hours (so Google tells me) - and it's something to which I'd given barely a thought. I knew none of the details.

Would I recommend it to you? I suppose the answer is yes. First, I think it was an incredible piece of storytelling. And I do also think that there's a duty to understand how incompetence and complacency can function as the perfect breeding ground for unbelievable cruelty and suffering. It frightens me.