D-Day

I shall be in France towards the end of next week but staying outside of Le Mans, to the south of the Normandy beaches although I have visited them in the past. I would like to go back there again but will enjoy being back in France anyway, even if its only for a  few days over the Le Mans 24 Hour race weekend. .So, today has been the 80th anniversary of the Allied invasion of France to liberate that country and the rest of Europe from the Nazis. It is important  to remember what our parents and grandparents were fighting for 80 years ago, as far right extremism is on the rise again in too many countries. The politics of division, scapegoating and demagogic nationalism threatens our democracies and freedoms, as it always has. It was telling that veterans now aged around 100, interviewed as part of the D-Day commemorations, bemoaned the fact that war was still being waged. Their friends and colleagues did not give their lives for the lessons of history to be so recklessly ignored. I have used one of the Remembrance postbox toppers displayed in the recent exhibition at Guildford Cathedral for today's blip. The extra photo is of some yellow poppies that have self seeded at the front of our house. Poppies  are a symbol of remembrance for the fallen in the UK - they are usually red but I am taking the sunshine colour of these as a sign of hope for the future.