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heliopausaIt's lunchtime, and the guests coming for lunch haven't come yet. I do hope they do, because there was lots of racing about tidying and cooking and even internal household they're-coming-any-minute crabbiness. Maybe I should have phoned to remind them, or maybe they're just late.
Anyway, as I'm idle, I'll pass the time by writing one more entry in the never-ending list of things I didn't know/have just found out, but probably everyone else does:
In mid-1940, while the British Expeditionary Force was being desperately ferried from Dunkirk, the 51st Highlanders were cut off from the main force by the advance of the Germans under Rommel, and taken prisoner. They were marched from the coast of Normandy some eleven hundred kilometres to POW camp - and on the way, a 26-year-old lieutenant, Jimmy Atkinson, hearing the beat of the marching feet and I suppose furious with the fortunes of war, and inspired by the courage of the Highlanders was inspired to compose a reel... or to begin composing it. He worked on it further in camp, along with another man whose name I have forgotten (and the guests have just phoned to say they'll be another twenty minutes**) ... anyway.. they composed it, and practised it - a reel for ten men, and I gather they danced it barefoot - until they felt it was perfected. It spells out, so to speak, a St Andrew's Cross, for resolution and courage and fortitude.
** They weren't though! They came while I was still writing this, and a pleasant lunch was had by all. :)
Anyway, as I'm idle, I'll pass the time by writing one more entry in the never-ending list of things I didn't know/have just found out, but probably everyone else does:
In mid-1940, while the British Expeditionary Force was being desperately ferried from Dunkirk, the 51st Highlanders were cut off from the main force by the advance of the Germans under Rommel, and taken prisoner. They were marched from the coast of Normandy some eleven hundred kilometres to POW camp - and on the way, a 26-year-old lieutenant, Jimmy Atkinson, hearing the beat of the marching feet and I suppose furious with the fortunes of war, and inspired by the courage of the Highlanders was inspired to compose a reel... or to begin composing it. He worked on it further in camp, along with another man whose name I have forgotten (and the guests have just phoned to say they'll be another twenty minutes**) ... anyway.. they composed it, and practised it - a reel for ten men, and I gather they danced it barefoot - until they felt it was perfected. It spells out, so to speak, a St Andrew's Cross, for resolution and courage and fortitude.
And Atkinsons notated it carefully in the right formal notation, beginning something like this: 1- 8 1s set and cast below 3s, lead up to face 1st corners ... and posted it home to his wife - but it was intercepted, and taken to be a code, and wikipedia (yes, I know) says that the Abwehr spent the rest of the war trying to decode it.
Which may not be entirely true, because another officer later also sent it back to Scotland, and it was picked up and danced as a Red Cross fundraiser for the rest of the war, and remains one of the most popular reels in Scotland. Anyway - the first sending was certainly intercepted, and it's a good story, and one I didn't know until yesterday.
** They weren't though! They came while I was still writing this, and a pleasant lunch was had by all. :)
