Moazzam Begg

Just finished reading "Enemy Combatant" by Moazzam Begg. Both the book and the man made a deep impression on me and made me think about justice, fear, ignorance, compassion, truth, God, no-God and Buddhism

M B, softly spoken, calm, modest, highly articulate and unenbittered despite being imprisonned 3 years without charge or trial, talked at the Apollo theatre at the beginning of the month . He spoke of his harrowing experiences in Bagram detention centre in Afghanistan and in Guantanamo (mostly in solitary confinement) and remarkably has positive words about some of the US guards he met in Guantanamo. When asked about how he was able to express himself so well, he said that before his incarceration he was not a confident public speaker so he wanted to thank the CIA, MI5, FBI and the US military for giving him the confidence and experience after over 300 interrogations to perfect his style!

So where from now?

John and I have decided to hold a coffee morning soon to help raise funds to send a lorry with supplies to Gaza. Thank you Rachel from "Friends of Palestine" for all your hard work!

Lucius Seneca

"It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested" Seneca

After Easter Day's break in, my little 2CV is back on the road, or nearly... after straightening the driver's door, fitting a new steering column, sorting out the dangling wires, fitting a new exhaust ... and welding the very rusty rear windows and repairing a puncture, I have just realised the MOT is very overdue! Oops!

From Conyer Creek to Sunbury-on-Thames

We are back home again after a pleasant but not uneventful voyage on Vechtlust II "the one who likes to fight".

Everybody got on very well, Jack, psychotherapist amongst other professions, good cook and champion rope thrower, Diccon who had travelled from Brussels, socialist, cheerful and reliable, and us two very happy to be moving on the water again.

Sunshine and calm most of the week end but a welcome brise enabled us to hoist the sails 2 or 3 times. Record of 8.2 knots in the Thames was recorded!
However, tragedy struck in the form of the mast crashing down! Whilst moored in South Docks Marina, the men decided to take the mast down to enable us to get under Tower Bridge. Thankfully I decided to go to have a shower. When I came back, the mast was down indeed but crashed too! Jack, John and Diccon all overlooked the fact they had taken off the pin at the bootom of the mast while they were untangling the wiers at the winch... the mast apparently came down noiselessly but broke when it hit the roof of the cabin...

Apart from this catastrophe (which could have been worse had I popped my head out of the cabin whilst the mast was coming down) motoring on the Thames was extremely enjoyable andwe felt like "tourists with a difference".

I particularly like mooring on a buoy for lunch near Battersea Park, a few yards from the "London Peace Pagoda", built in 1985 by monks and nuns of the Japanese Buddhist Order Nipponzan Myohoji