Today I spent the afternoon at the National War Museum, touring through in the company of my sister Andrea, her husband Steve, several of his family, my niece Audrey and nephew Rowan, and taking pictures galore. This one is my favourite, not for its composition but for its irony. The button, of course, began an animated display. I wondered if the people who had made the caption had been conscious of the ironic double entendre.

The place is quite heart-wrenching. I saw more machinery for war than I had ever thought I would, and many displays were captioned with self-explanatory quotations from prominent voices of their respective times. Battles from time almost immemorial, New France, the War of 1812, the Boer War, WW1, WW2, Korea, the Cold War...in the next while I will post some of my pictures, and give you a little walking tour, with me, of memories of the past. The museum finishes its display with a dramatic moving triptych collage of scenes from war, and a few from peace.

It was emotionally powerful, in some ways, and I was glad to get home to better news than retrospecting about a sad past, despite the good company in which I passed the afternoon. Today my second great-niece was born: welcome to the world, darling Willow.