My first post of the new year! It took me some time to finally get it published. Initially it started with a short bit about new year's eve, but I figured that's a little late, so we'll leave that for the moment. Perhaps in February.
I spent the holidays getting a job (hopefully), studying the organisation of late medieval Maastricht (as far as possible with the help of but a few, sadly flawed, books), doing some uni work and browsing through the family archive. We still had a lot of late 19th/early 20th century booklets of speeches held by some of the ARP leaders (the Anti Revolutionary Party, strong for the re-reformed faith, churches, the army, and keeping your trousers (or dresses) on at all possible times) on various issues such as why women shouldn't have the right to vote (but should vote anyway, to thwart the evil socialists and liberals) and why putting up a maypole is an important part of their beliefs (although I believe the re-reformed church has dropped this part since the '70s or so).
Somewhat puzzlingly, there was also a socialist leaflet about why women should vote, and an undated ad for the Scheveningen Kurhaus (judging from the swimsuit featured on it it was before the invention of, well, modernity), both of which may have been maliciously put in by communist infiltrators to slander earlier generations of the Bosch family. Sadly for them, this has been for naught, as we don't give a toss.
What else has been up? Well, ten days ago it was exactly 530 years since the death of Charles the Bold and the collapse of the Burgundian state, which I commemorated by telling people who didn't care. Also, I read Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman and had a lot of fun in the process. It's a brilliant book and I can only encourage other people to read it, which is why I already lent it out to Ulrike. Meanwhile, for my study I've been reading up on society, the (nuclear) family, marriage and sexuality. It's interesting stuff, and it's fascinating how attitudes to these things changed throughout the centuries (though I've only reached the long 16th century, by now).
To leave you something to read, there's this BBC article about a secret proposal for a union between France and the UK in the '50s. Rather surprising, and I don't think either country is disappointed it fell through (I can only take the 35% "Oui" result in the poll with a grain of salt; surely a lot of funny non-Frangleterrians voted).
