Blas Festival!

I got an email reminding me today that the chance to order Blas tickets at a discount (varying, but about £3-4 per ticket) expires at the end of the month.

The Blas Festival is really a wonderful thing; it's a series of musical performances in early September all over the Highlands by a variety of artists to celebrate Gaidhlig musical tradition and language: it includes long-time stars like Capercaillie, Aly Bain, and Phil Cunningham, rising stars like Anna Massie and Julie Fowlis, and excellent young musicians like Calum Alex Macmillan and others. The program is broken down by region, with over 50 different individual performers or groups featuring in different venues. I saw two of the events in last year's programme (I'd meant to see three, but my timing was off), and I wished I could just have followed the feis programme all over the Highlands! I had a blast. You don't have to speak Gaidhlig to appreciate all the wonderful music. If you like traditional Scottish music, catch at least some of these performance; you won't regret it!

One of last year's performances also proved, purely by chance, the opportunity for me to meet the lovely and talented magaidhbhan, for which I am very glad!

catching up: naughty cats

Tne evening, I came in late to find this and this. Someone decided to help themselves!

I have photographic evidence of similar misbehavior previously, but I don't seem to have uploaded the photos yet...

calling WWII air war boffins

gr_c17 and I were talking a few weeks ago about WWII aircrews (while playing Down in Flames, of course). I had thought that, at least to begin with, only officers were pilots in most WWII air forces, but that that stricture had been loosened when supplies of officers ran low. Bryan had thought that at least some sergeants were pilots; he also thought he recalled that the 8th Air Force had at one point decided to make all its enlisted aircrew up to sergeants because they had ascertained that the German luft stalags treated sergeants differently from (better than) other enlisted personnel.

How many errors or misconceptions were we guilty of? percyprune? vikingcat?