A special dispensation has been agreed, I will be allowed to open my Christmas present today because as my wife says,

"This is something special"

Off to the barn now....
I just opened the present from my family.

Many years ago like most young men I wanted a motorcycle but with only limited funds available I was only able to afford a rather tired and long past its best 1967 T120 Triumph Bonneville. Two tone dark red and white.
. I loved that bike, it took me all over the UK as well as to holidays in France, Austria and Germany. It was easy to work on and I did nearly all the maintenance myself, despite its age and mileage it never let me down and I always said I would never sell it.
After I became a soldier I put it into storage in my father's garage in London. I have on many occasions promised myself I would bring it over to France and start the restoration it needed but always something came along first that needed my attention.
and so there it sat in the darkness but never unloved and never forgotten. Earlier this year, unbeknown to me my wife and daughters with some help from my father did the research and had the bike shipped to a restoration company in the North of England
They have completely overhauled the chassis, engine, gearbox and wheels and completed a full repaint. They have done all that is required to bring it back to a condition even better than when I first used it.
My son in law co-ordinated the process including the shipping and importation and now I sit here in my study looking at the bike on my driveway. As a gift it is beyond compare and I had to spend time composing myself when I opened the crate and saw what it was.
I am a very lucky man. I am off for a ride.

Merry Christmas everybody.

More from Culture

I just finished Eric Adler's The Battle of the Classics, and wanted to say something about Joel Christiansen's review linked below. I am not sure what motivates the review (I speculate a bit below), but it gives a very misleading impression of the book. 1/x


The meat of the criticism is that the history Adler gives is insufficiently critical. Adler describes a few figures who had a great influence on how the modern US university was formed. It's certainly critical: it focuses on the social Darwinism of these figures. 2/x

Other insinuations and suggestions in the review seem wildly off the mark, distorted, or inappropriate-- for example, that the book is clickbaity (it is scholarly) or conservative (hardly) or connected to the events at the Capitol (give me a break). 3/x

The core question: in what sense is classics inherently racist? Classics is old. On Adler's account, it begins in ancient Rome and is revived in the Renaissance. Slavery (Christiansen's primary concern) is also very old. Let's say classics is an education for slaveowners. 4/x

It's worth remembering that literacy itself is elite throughout most of this history. Literacy is, then, also the education of slaveowners. We can honor oral and musical traditions without denying that literacy is, generally, good. 5/x

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The first ever world map was sketched thousands of years ago by Indian saint
“Ramanujacharya” who simply translated the following verse from Mahabharat and gave the world its real face

In Mahabharat,it is described how 'Maharishi Ved Vyasa' gave away his divine vision to Sanjay


Dhritarashtra's charioteer so that he could describe him the events of the upcoming war.

But, even before questions of war could begin, Dhritarashtra asked him to describe how the world looks like from space.

This is how he described the face of the world:

सुदर्शनं प्रवक्ष्यामि द्वीपं तु कुरुनन्दन। परिमण्डलो महाराज द्वीपोऽसौ चक्रसंस्थितः॥
यथा हि पुरुषः पश्येदादर्शे मुखमात्मनः। एवं सुदर्शनद्वीपो दृश्यते चन्द्रमण्डले॥ द्विरंशे पिप्पलस्तत्र द्विरंशे च शशो महान्।

—वेद व्यास, भीष्म पर्व, महाभारत


Meaning:-

हे कुरुनन्दन ! सुदर्शन नामक यह द्वीप चक्र की भाँति गोलाकार स्थित है, जैसे पुरुष दर्पण में अपना मुख देखता है, उसी प्रकार यह द्वीप चन्द्रमण्डल में दिखायी देता है। इसके दो अंशो मे पीपल और दो अंशो मे विशाल शश (खरगोश) दिखायी देता है।


Meaning: "Just like a man sees his face in the mirror, so does the Earth appears in the Universe. In the first part you see leaves of the Peepal Tree, and in the next part you see a Rabbit."

Based on this shloka, Saint Ramanujacharya sketched out the map, but the world laughed