Looking for the Easter Bunny...

Going South looking for the Easter Bunny....

Have a lovely Easter!!!!

Silent Sunday

Grand National Shame!

Once again, two horses lost their lives in the British Grand National last Sunday.

Why? So man can make money out of them. Shameful. Did you see the jockeys hitting the horses again and again? I couldn't watch any longer than a couple of minutes. So painful. And shameful.

It is a cruel race and should be stopped. Why do we abuse all animals so man can profit from them?

Will these poor horses be remembered by next week? I don't think so. They will be replaced by more horses - so it goes on and on.

Maybe it would be more fun just to race the jockeys with no horses and see if they can jump over those high fences.

I would go and watch that.

Silent Sunday

Pesce d'Aprile

For Italians, the first of April marks the celebration of "Pesce d'Aprile" (literally April’s Fish), and antics are very similar to those you know for April Fools' Day. Practical jokes and hoaxes are common across the country on 1st April, but why is there a fish in the name of the Italian day? The traditional kids’ (and very often adults’ too!) prank for Pesce d'Aprile involves the taping of a cutout of a small fish (pesciolino) to someone's back. Then the exchange would go: L'hai visto? (Have you seen him/it?) Chi? (Who?) Il pesce d'Aprile! (The April’s fish/fool!) Obviously the person with the ‘pesciolino’ taped to his back is the fool. Poverino! Here’s a genuine Italian 'pesciolino' of your very own to print out, cut out and enjoy hours (well, minutes) of innocent fun.

The origins of April Fools' Day across the world are disputed, but many believe it dates back to when the Georgian calendar was adopted and many resisted the change; the term may have been used to refer to someone who still stood by the old Julian calendar. Another theory is that those who planted crops before May 1, the traditional first day of summer, was an April fool. Whatever its origins, the day is still widely celebrated across the world in surprisingly similar ways.

So, do you have any Pesce d'Aprile jokes planned? Don't worry—I won't let the fish out of the bag!

French 1st April postcards from the beginning of XX century

Silent Sunday ...in Spring

Rome won't forget

67 years ago one of the most horrendous atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis in Italy took place in Rome. The ‘Fosse Ardeatine massacre’ was a mass execution carried out 24 March 1944 by Nazi German occupation troops during the Second World War as a reprisal for a partisan attack conducted on the previous day in central Rome.

On 24 March 1944, after a partisan attack in via Rasella where 33 soldiers of the Bozen battalion died, the Nazi occupation troops in Rome, under the command of gen. Maetzler, ordered colonel Kappler to retaliate by executing 10 Italians for every German soldier killed. A total of 335 Italian hostages were taken, composed of civilians (including Jews from the local community) who were casually picked up on the city streets, Italian prisoners of war (up to General rank), previously captured partisans and some inmates from Roman prisons. The massacre was perpetrated without prior public notice in what was then a little-frequented rural suburb of the city, inside the tunnels of the disused quarries near the Via Ardeatina.

The bodies of the victims were placed in piles. German military engineers set explosives to seal the caves and hide the atrocity. They remained summarily buried and abandoned for over a year inside the caves. They were eventually found, exhumed and given proper burial only after our capital city was liberated by the Allies in 1945. Subsequently, the Cave Ardeatine became a National Monument and a Memorial Cemetery open daily to visitors to remember and honour the victims. Never forget the atrocities of the past to prevent them in the future.