Bart

Reading my friend Sleepy's blog yesterday, I realised that I haven't a clue about what it's like to really suffer from insomnia. I'm like the annoying person who claims to have flu when they have a cold. The truth is, I've had those nights, like anyone, when sleep simply won't come, but a Nytol the next night lets me drift off, just like the advert claims.
Sleepy's not the only one of my friends who suffers from this, I know of two others and Kevin. Kevin's insomnia was quite frankly very useful when we were separated by an eight hour time difference. Now it's not so much fun at all.
I try making helpful but useless suggestions based on what I know helps me to sleep, a long walk or cycle, getting up early and no coffee after noon. I can drink coffee until about 16.00 before it causes me problems, but I err on the side of caution. I don't want to risk lying in bed with my heart pounding from the caffeine and KNOWING absolutely, that this isn't psychological, this is a chemical stimulant and nothing, but nothing is going to put me out until that chemical clears my body.

A few weeks ago, my friend Adam (Internet Explorer only) talked about 'Stockholm Syndrome'. I hadn't heard of it before, but found it an interesting idea. It came up again in today's Guardian in a heart-breaking story of a Viennese girl who has been found after eight years in captivity, and yes, I write it like that on purpose, because to treat someone like this is to treat them like an animal. Her parents never gave up hope and that has been rewarded, but how in the name of all that is Holy do you ever get over something like that? The man killed himself by throwing himself in front of a train. A startling number of people kill themselves this way as any London commuter knows, but my thought is, how do you explain yourself to your maker for kidnapping someone's child and keeping them in a cellar for eight years ?

I feel a bond with the planet Pluto. In fairness I did anyway because of reading Kim Stanley Robinson's 'Icehenge'. Now Pluto, at the whim of scientists, has been downgraded from planetary status to 'Dwarf Planet'. Pluto will always be the ninth planet to me, and still has as much impact on my astrological life today as yesterday. Except of course when it's Mickey Mouse's dog.

So, today is St. Bartholomew's Eve, hence the pictures from the William Hartnell Dr. Who episode where the Tardis arrives in Paris to try to stop the assassination of Admiral de Coligny or some such.
I first became aware of the awful events of this day when I read Prosper Mérimée's book, 'Le Règne du Charles IX'.
Unbelievably, at a signal given by ringing the bells for Matins, the Huguenots in Paris on the 24th of August 1572 were massacred and this sparked further atrocities across France. This in the name of the Christian Faith. Possibly ten thousand were slaughtered across France in those few days. I have a visual stuck in my head from the Mérimée book, that of a Huguenot wearing armour, screaming and falling from a building because fire was cooking him inside his metal casing.

Today Protestants and Catholics for the most part not only manage to get along but often embrace the good in each others' form of worship. I'm not saying that the Christian Church had to go through that horror and others like it to get here, but having gone through it and survived we have at least learned from it. I hope that we never again kill other people in our own Faith and desecrate their Holy places in the name of that same God (no gender implied) whom we all worship one way or another.

Who was St. Bart? Just some Jewish bloke, one of Jesus's twelve disciples. I don't know that he did anything spectacular, but his name made the list.