Today is Peat Cutting Monday, a public holiday in the Falkland Islands. Peat Cutting Day was the time of year when Falkland Islanders went out to cut cubes of surface-soil peat which was then used as the primary fuel for heating homes and cooking food in the islands.
Peat is found in pockets all around the Falklands with large deposits in the area around Stanley. Without such a handy supply of fuel, settlement of the Islands would have been unlikely. The use of peat continued for many years though today has been replaced by kerosene or diesel in most households.
The smell of peat burning is very nostalgic and remains in the air at some places around Stanley and elsewhere. As the need for peat cutting has diminished, Islanders instead use the day to go fishing and camping.
Too late for flowers…
Homwork
Time for Dog Spider Costumes!
Saturday was the anniversary of the death of French composer Jacques Offenbach in 1880. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas and for his comic opera, Orpheus in the Underworld. In the last decade of the 19th century the Paris cabarets the Moulin Rouge and Folies Bergère adopted the music of the “Galop infernal” from the culminating scene of the opera to accompany the can-can, and ever since then the tune has been popularly associated with the dance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CU0IyxvcH4E
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