Less can be more.

French Station Clocks.

Out of desperation to include in today's blog something that was connected with its name: Frenchmodelrailway.com, I googled "French Station Clocks" in the hope of finding some interesting clocks in French stations.

I was baffled by the hundreds of images that came up of what were obviously pseudo-antique household clocks.

It turns out that a French Station Clock is the term used for a large clock face that dangles from a metal arm of some sort.

Presumably, they were originally to be found at French stations and are now being mass manufactured for the home-owner or maybe cafe owner who wants to introduce a bit of character into a room.

Here's a random selection of such:

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Currently listening to:

As One: Planetary Folklore

This CD came out in 1997 and I pretty well bought it at that time. I'd always imagined that As One were a modern jazz trio of some kind. Anyway, I looked them up on the web and it turns out that As One are a Korean girl duo.

As One

I was fairly surprised at this discovery but then I remembered that a Reggae outfit I really like called "Dry and Heavy" turned out not to be Rastafarians but were young musicians from Japan.

However, I looked at their photograph and found it difficult to imagine these young girls churning out jazz funk in a studio - or indeed anywhere else.

So I searched the web again and discovered that As One is also a bloke called Kirk Degiorgio.

As One

And this from Wikipedia.

"Kirk Degiorgio, better known as As One, is a British techno producer and DJ. Born in the late 60s in Stepney, east London, and raised in Suffolk, he started producing music in the early 90s. He founded the labels A.R.T. Records and Op-Art Records and releases on them as well as B12 Records, R&S Records, New Electronica, and others. His style is a mixture of Detroit-style techno, mixed with funk, soul and jazz fusion."

That's more like it.

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Last night's dinner:

Felt sick all day, the first time I've felt physically ill in years.

Nevertheless, felt I should try and eat something.

The chicken and ham pie in the photograph was of excellent quality but I forced myself to eat it. Felt no worse afterwards.

With mashed potato.

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Less can be more:

Often when I'm praying, I judge the sincerity of the exercise by the length of time spent concentrating on the task.

Actually, I've got a tendency to do that generally.

So, if someone told me that I could strengthen my leg muscles with an innovative 10 second exercise done once a day, I would still choose the no more efficacious 90 minute session done twice a week.

Because I love fish, the traditional act of fasting on a Friday by eating fish rather than meat has always seemed inapplicable to me. So, instead I devote time to reading a religious tract of some kind and, unless it causes a social rift of some kind, never consuming alcohol that day.

So, yesterday, being Friday, I picked up my monthly issue of the missionary magazine, "Africa", with the intention of reading one of  the articles therein. The magazine had been left open at the end of an article about the Shrine at Medjugorje and how the Bosnian war had stopped pilgrimages to it.

I re-read the last paragraph of that article to check that I had indeed read it already and my eye was caught by this sentence:

".....thereafter we were unable to go on pilgrimage. We formed a group known as Friends of Medjugorje and just did our best to live the messages, to promote prayer groups, and quietly convert our own lives."

Admittedly, I was feeling crap yesterday and my concentration was shot to hell, but that sentence had such a powerfully uplifting effect on me that I felt no need to spend time looking for a new article to read.

Less was indeed more in this case. What I'd taken from the one minute session of reading was just do your best. I could have read twenty pages and come away with nothing more important than that.

Medjugorje