Questo è il nuovo account ufficiale di Accueil. Ciao a tutti.

The Wallace Memorial at Bazentin today. In good order (as was the 9 Brave Men), but notable that wreaths laid 22/7/25 which have the new "environmentally friendly" cardboard labels are already bleached white, despite being in the shade. Good intentions, but not thought through.

Lochnagar(*) Crater 11/8/25. Looking sad in places. Great organisation & stunning piece of WW1 history, but I’ve never liked the extensive use of timber decking here, - “maintenance nightmare” written all over it, & much better alternatives available. (No “k” in Lochnagar👍).

CGAF. IFYK,YK. "Denying the undeniable just makes you sound like a fool as well as a liar." Ally Carter

What's your recommendation for somebody to look after your wallet whilst you visit the lavatory - Dick Turpin ?

Mill Road Cemetery, Thiepval, yesterday afternoon. (Rocky told me later that I'd just missed the film crew from the BBC's "Gardener's World").

The current little helper (at food o'clock😂).

We have "people" in he UK who take little girls back to their muslim home countries to have their vaginas slashed with razor blades. Those are not "British people", & they should be flogged savagely & shipped back to the sh*t hole countries they cane from.

Delville Wood Cemetery was something of a surprise to the landowner when returning to the Somme after WW1, - nobody had asked his permission to build it - an issue which came up during negotiations to build the Scots memorial at High Wood🫢

Any ideas ? Unusual personal headstone inscriptions seen today in Warlencourt British Cemetery - "R.I.P. M.D." So, "requiescat in pace" & M.D., but Pte Morris was 19 years old, so that really rules out the "obvious" M.D.'s. Any ideas what it could signify ?

Rancourt German Cemetery, Somme, yesterday. Eleven thousand four hundred & forty two burials. Most stones have two men named on each side, but I have no doubt at all that the headstones are nothing other than representative of the men thought to be buried in this cemetery.

Not a gravestone, I'm afraid; its a "Special Memorial". The available evidence is that originally it was a wooden cross in a "Memorial Row", so there is apparently no evidence that Harvey-Kelly was ever buried in Brown's Copse. (I had cause to look at the case some years ago).

You think you visited Fergus Bowes-Lyons' grave. You didn't. Its a matter discussed in recent exchanges between a member of the public & the ADC to the cwgs's President, Princess Anne, F.B-W's great niece. In my opinion cwgc's relationship with integrity & credibility is tenuous.

Thistle Dump Cemetery, with the Bois des Foureaux ("High Wood") on the horizon. "Ghastly by day, ghostly by night, the rottenest place on the Somme". Places which my granddad would have been very familiar with during the winter of 1916-17 ~ 1st Bn QO Cameron Highlanders.

My French is "effluent", but I can get on ok shopping, eating, making excuses to the Gendarmerie Nationale traffic arm, & other essentials (bars👍) But I'm a pragmatist when it comes to really understanding a foreign language (impossible) - even the golden arches can't do it😲

Currently maintaining the Entente Cordial👍