Word is made flesh as God reveals himself ... as a fish! 
Edward Helmore New York

This month’s offering was not actually written by Roger Beaumont, but he supplied it - and we both loved it!
An obscure Jewish sect in New York has been gripped in awe by what it believes to be a mystical visitation by a 20lb carp that was heard shouting in Hebrew, in what many Jews worldwide are hailing as a modern miracle.
Many of the 7,000-member Skver sect of Hasidim in New Square, 30 miles north of Manhattan, believe God has revealed himself in fish form.
According to two fish-cutters at the New Square Fish Market, the carp was about to be slaughtered and made into gefilte fish for Sabbath dinner when it suddenly began shouting apocalyptic warnings in Hebrew.
Many believe the carp was channelling the troubled soul of a revered community elder who recently died; others say it was God. The only witnesses to the mystical show were Zalmen Rosen, a 57-year-old Hasid with 11 children, and his co-worker, Luis Nivelo. They say that on 28 January at 4pm they were about to club the carp on the head when it began yelling.
Nivelo, a Gentile who does not understand Hebrew, was so shocked at the sight of a fish talking in any language that he fell over. He ran into the front of the store screaming: 'It's the Devil! The Devil is here!' Then the shop owner heard it shouting warnings and commands too.
'It said "Tzaruch shemirah" and "Hasof bah",' he told the New York Times, 'which essentially means that everyone needs to account for themselves because the end is near.'
The animated carp commanded Rosen to pray and study the Torah. Rosen tried to kill the fish but injured himself. It was finally butchered by Nivelo and sold.
However, word spread far and wide and Nivelo complains he has been plagued by phone calls from as far away as London and Israel. The story has since been amplified by repetition and some now believe the fish's outburst was a warning about the dangers of the impending war in Iraq.
Some say they fear the born-again President Bush believes he is preparing the world for the Second Coming of Christ, and war in Iraq is just the opening salvo in the battle of Armageddon.
Local resident Abraham Spitz said: 'Two men do not dream the same dream. It is very rare that God reminds people he exists in this modern world. But when he does, you cannot ignore it.'
Others in New Square discount the apocalyptic reading altogether and suggest the notion of a talking fish is as fictional as Tony Soprano's talking-fish dream in an episode of The Sopranos .
Stand-up comedians have already incorporated the carp into their comedy routines at weddings. One gefilte company has considered changing it's slogan to: 'Our fish speaks for itself.'
Still, the shouting carp corresponds with the belief of some Hasidic sects that righteous people can be reincarnated as fish. They say that Nivelo may have been selected because he is not Jewish, but a weary Nivelo told the New York Times : 'I wish I never said anything about it. I'm getting so many calls every day, I've stopped answering. Israel, London, Miami, Brooklyn. They all want to hear about the talking fish.'
A devout Christian, he still thinks the carp was the Devil. 'I don't believe any of this Jewish stuff. But I heard that fish talk.'
He's grown tired of the whole thing. 'It's just a big headache for me,' he added. 'I pull my phone out of the wall at night. I don't sleep and I've lost weight.'
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

By Roger Beaumont
  Available at Bookazine

On a bright morning in May

THE MAIN MAN in Hitler's wartime intelligence network was Reinhard Tristam Eugen Heydrich, the infamous 'Protector' of Prague. Heydrich was the chief architect of 'The Final Solution' - the mass extermination of Jews and other 'undesirables' in all lands captured by the German military advance through Europe from 1939 to 1942. Heydrich was also tasked with the 'Germanisation' of the Czech population in Prague where he held a posting as the unofficial dictator of Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia.
British intelligence services began to plot the assassination of Heydrich in 1941. Nine selected men went through a rigorous training process; not aware at first of their target. This top secret was kept on a 'need to know' basis. Finally two local Czechs, Josef Gabcik and Jan Kubris, were assigned to carry out the 'hit' on a remote road by a hairpin bend outside Prague on the morning of 27 May 1942. Gabcik had a British-made Sten gun hidden under a coat, and Kubris carried a grenade in the deep poacher's pocket of his coat. A hundred metres away on a hill towards the village of Jungfern-Breschen were two lookouts that would signal to the assassins when they spotted the open green Mercedes in which Heydrich rode to his office in the city.
The hairpin bend where Gabcik stood was very sharp. Streetcars, two trolleys hitched together and taking power from overhead cables, screeched agonizingly as they turned. The street was busy. German soldiers drilled in the woods nearby. The two lookouts, Valcik and Jemelik, had difficulty keeping each other and the hit-men in view; what with passing German military vehicles and trucks, and the need to avoid attracting attention. For 55 minutes, this painful and tense wait continued. It was also dangerous, for at any moment some sharp-eyed German might well have wondered why four able-bodied men were loitering by the roadside.
At 10.25am Gabcik heard four sharp whistles (H in Morse code) - the signal they were waiting for. Moments later the target vehicle swept down the hill. Klein, the chauffeur, changed gears to take the sharp turn ahead. Beside him sat Reinhard Heydrich, in his black and silver-trimmed SS uniform, shuffling through some papers. Amazingly, he travelled without an armed escort; not even motorcycle outriders to clear the road ahead. Gabcik felt his heart rate soar. Unbelievably, they had been presented with a naked target.
Gabcik dropped his coat, brought up the Sten, and squeezed the trigger, intending to put a ten-round burst into one of the most feared and hated men in Europe. Nothing happened. At this vital moment in history, his weapon had jammed. Heydrich now looked up and saw the light machine gun pointed at him He drew his Luger automatic pistol and shouted to his driver. Klein threw the Mercedes into a skid, and the car screeched to a stop across the tram tracks, causing following trolleys to slide and stop, showering sparks. Seeing his companion desperately trying to clear the Sten, Kubris pulled the pin on his grenade and hurled it at the stalled car. Heydrich vaulted over the door and fired two shots at the Czechs before the grenade exploded by his side. The two assassins fled the scene. Heydrich staggered to the pavement, bleeding
profusely.
Passengers from the trams climbed down; some panicked by the explosion and gunfire. "Fetch an ambulance!" Shouted a woman. "It's the protector!"
An hour later, Heydrich was delivered in a baker's van to the Bulkova Hospital, where the medical director tried to reach Hradcany Castle, official HQ of the Protectorate and Heydrich's family residence. Nobody at the Castle seemed to comprehend what had happened. The Protector was on his way to Berlin, the caller was told. No, there was no way that Secretary of State Dr Karl Frank would come to telephone. He was far too busy to take a call from some sniveling Czech peasant.
"That's too bad". Said the medical director, "Tell him that we have the Oberguppenfuhrer here and he is unlikely to live. He walked into a bomb, and he's full of holes."
Heydrich lingered on for a week, as surgeons and specialists worked on him, trying to remove the pieces of metal, wire, glass, leather and horsehair distributed by the exploding grenade. SS troops cleared out all other patients, and surrounded the hospital with a ring of steel. Inevitably, Reinhard Heydrich died on the operating table on 3 June 1942.
As expected, retribution was severe. Hitler ordered a "stamping out of the whole canker at the heart of the Protectorate." Ten thousand Czechs were rounded up a day after the assassination attempt, and each evening in Wenceslas Square, 100 were shot by firing squads. When Dr Karl Frank discovered that the agents had parachuted into the village of Lidice, twenty miles northwest of Prague, he ordered it to be razed. At dawn on 8 June, a detachment of SS troops drove into the village. All the local men were lined up by the wall of the village café and shot dead. Babies were torn from their mothers and drowned in a cattle trough. Three pregnant women were bayoneted and shot in the face. The remaining women and children were herded into a barn, which was then set alight. Those trying to escape the flames and smoke as the building collapsed were gunned down. Lidice was finally burned to the ground by flame-throwers. Only charred debris remained of this once picturesque village.
The punishment was filmed and a medal was struck for the filmmakers. It bore Heydrich's profile and the word 'Rache' (Revenge) imprinted on it. Lidice had been wiped off the face of the Earth. The complete destruction this famous village outside Prague has to be of the most savage reprisals in modern history.
All over Europe, revenge was taken in a similar fashion. From a village in Norway to Oradour-sue-Glane in France, families were either incinerated within burning barns or shot dead as they tried to get away. Adolf Hitler (1899-1945) himself flew to the funeral of the Protector of Prague. "He was one of the greatest defenders of our greater German concept", he proclaimed to the massed gathering, "and he will be avenged."
Meantime, the assassins had fled to the crypt of the Karl Borromaeus church in Prague, entering through a removable slab. The church was Greek Orthodox, and the SS and Gestapo were under instructions to avoid provoking members of that faith for political reasons. In cramped conditions, over 80 members of the Czech Resistance also hid there among the assassins.
But these men were betrayed. Acting on an informer's tip, members of the SS Das Reich Division tore down the church and inevitably found the crypt. When the first two Germans who dropped into the hiding place were shot dead by the Czechs, the SS men fired their Smeiser sub-machine guns into the vault. They then pumped gasoline into the enclosure, which was set ablaze. None of the Czechs survived.
Ironically, the film of the revenge massacre at Lidice was excellent evidence for the prosecutors at the Nuremberg Trials after the war. In September 1945 Dr Frank himself,
'The Butcher of Lidice', was convicted and hanged for this barbaric war crime. He went to the gallows insisting that he had been merely "following orders".
After the war, a socialist member of the British Parliament questioned the wisdom of provoking such killers. The MP, Robert Paget, challenged British Intelligence services on
the concept of sending agents on missions that stung the Nazis into such bloody reprisals. These in turn created more civilian hatred among against the Nazi occupying forces. "This was our general idea when we flew in trained agents to assassinate Heydrich", Paget protested. "The main Czech resistance movement was a direct consequence of SS reprisals for the violent death of Reinhard Heydrich."
Was it worth the loss of so many innocent lives? That was Paget's question. A man named Richard Pinder, who had been working undercover in Prague, came forward in public for the first time and answered him: "The killing of Heydrich was an act of justice that lightened our darkness and gave us hope," he insisted.
Pinder had been training guerrillas in sabotage in 1941 when he was caught in a German drive to round up men for forced labour - known as slavery in earlier times. Pinder's fake papers made him out to be a French gardening expert. Dr Frank, as Deputy Protector of Czechoslovakia, had taken over the big estates of a wealthy Jewish family and applied for a professional landscape gardener to look after the grounds. Pinder got the job, and was thereafter the silent witness to Frank's career as a uniformed gangster-tyrant.
"It is true that Dr Frank avenged Heydrich's murder", he said years later. "But in all occupied countries, the Nazis were liquidating whole communities once they had served their purpose. Czechoslovakia was industrially very important to the German war machine. The local people fed the guns until it came their own turn to die. Hitler and his ruling cadre of criminals put vicious thugs into uniform and gave them official sanction to maim, torture and kill. This was the stark reality of Nazi philosophy."
Said Britain's wartime Prime Minister, Winston Spencer Churchill (1874-1965): "The only way to mobilize popular support for secret armies of resistance fighters was to stage such dramatic acts of terrorism against the German occupying forces."
Czech-Americans were aware of the sacrifice. In Stern Park Gardens, Illinois, and in Bohemia, Long Island, the local citizens voted to change the names of their communities to 'Lidice' in memory of the innocents who had been so brutally murdered. These civilians had died for the actions of four brave men who waited by a roadside near Prague one fine Spring morning in May 1942.
(Research, 'A man called Intrepid' by William Stevenson, Sphere Books)

Bad Luck, Bad Timing!

On the same day the picture of the train derailment near Petchaburi appeared the price of rail travel increased - with the state rail authority promising a “better service”.
Price increases for 1st and 2nd class only.
Fortunately there were no serious injuries reported.

There are also Ghosts in Scotland

Sceptic and author Roddy Martine opens his psychic casebook to reveal a Scotland that most don't even know exists - Supernatural Scotland. In a personal journey, he investigated claims of poltergeists, second sight and shape changing. And as the evidence of his own eyes grew, so did his realisation that there is a secret side to our lives. His book, Supernatural Scotland, will chill you to the bone ...

THE ABBOT HOUSE
I FIRST visited the Abbot House in Dunfermline when it was undergoing a transformation under the guidance of Dr Elspeth King, formerly of The People's Palace in Glasgow, and her partner Michael Donnelly.
The building dates back to 1450, and in 1990, the Dunfermline Heritage Trust successfully raised £1million to restore it into a lively heritage centre.
Inside, life-size figures recall local heroes. Another extraordinary feature is a reconstruction of the bejewelled head-shrine of St Margaret, wife of King Malcolm Canmore.
From the moment you first catch sight of it in the heart of Dunfermline, you know that the Abbot House is a curious place. For a start, the exterior is harled in pink, the colour originating from a time when they used coagulated bull's blood to make the plaster stick.
Inside, the rooms are equally strange and atmospheric. The Queen Anne staircase in particular affects certain people. A former receptionist and a young boy, one of a group of schoolchildren with learning difficulties, both refused to go near it.
Almost everybody comments on the sudden drop in temperature when they step out on to the landing.
Sheila Pitcairn, a historian who has been closely involved with the development, has compiled a mass of evidence suggesting that it is very much lived in by persons unseen and unknown.
She insists, nevertheless, that whoever they are, they mean no harm since it is a house of goodness and love. She recalls the visit of a clairvoyant who exactly described a room in the east tower, although he had never been there.
He pointed out that the treads of the spiral staircase were relatively unworn compared to the other floors, and said that it had been a one-way staircase.
When he entered the room, he said it was full of children. Sheila later discovered that this had been the bedroom where the orphan children and some of the adults were taken when they became ill and were expected to die.
A local doctor who had made use of the room for storage prior to the renovations taking place confirmed that it had always been known as The Dead Room.

THE GOBLIN HA'
DEEP in the woods of the Yester Estate at Gifford stand the ruins of Yester Castle, built centuries ago by Hugo de Gifford, who, legend has it, was prince of darkness.
The castle today is a bit of a mess and under the care of Historic Scotland, but the curse of de Gifford lives on.
It is said that he made a pact with the devil, promising sanctuary to his followers for eternity.
In the underground vault known as the Goblin Ha', which lies beneath the castle, is a passageway leading to a well. On the other side of this is a wall behind which the spirits of the underworld await patiently the call of their master.
As a schoolboy I went to look at this well and had a terrifying experience when my torch faded and a deathly coldness came upon me. At the same time, I felt an enormous pressure pushing me backwards from the well. The dog that accompanied me fled into the open air outside trembling. As you can imagine, I wasted no time in following him.
Later, I discovered that various others had had a similar experience, and as a result, the entrance to the hall is now sealed off. Then, not long ago, a Canadian man spent an afternoon with a metal detector looking for treasure at the castle. The next day he had a heart attack. I was also told that a beech tree had fallen on a workman employed on restoration work.
Writing about the Goblin Ha' over 200 years ago, Sir Walter Scott observed that no mortal built this place. I would tend to agree with him.
THE PHANTOM'S GRAVE
IN the heart of the woods at Rothiemuchus in Perthshire is a small churchyard in which there is a grave belonging to a long ago chief of the Clan Shaw.
Standing over 6ft tall, he had the reputation when alive of being a fearless warrior.
Since then, his ghost, a gigantic, wild and enraged figure, has sometimes been seen by travellers passing nearby.
Most probably, this is after his spirit has been aroused. On his grave are five cylindrical stones resembling white cheeses, and over the centuries it has become a rites of passage ritual for young men in the neighbourhood to remove them.
In every case, dreadful consequences have befallen the culprits, and the stones have always been back in place the following day.
Other locals have spoken of keeping their distance and of experiencing shivering fits when they get too close. Whatever the truth, the authorities have taken the matter seriously and a wrought iron cover has been erected to keep vandals at bay.
THE SMALL PEOPLE
I WAS on a visit to Sleat on the Isle of Skye and called in on Sir Iain Noble who owns the hotel at Eilean Iarmain. He had earlier told me about six fairy houses in Gleann an Uird that had been archaeologically excavated.
Now you have to understand that Scottish fairy tradition is very different from that of the English. We don't go in for little winged butterfly people, but we do have plenty of evidence to suggest that long ago - around 2000 BC - there lived colonies of tiny folk.
In the Uists, I was told that there is a graveyard of tiny bones. On Skye, there are fairy pools in Glen Brittle, overlooked by the Cuillin Mountains and, on the west coast, a Fairy Glen with no less than 365 grassy hillocks. There are many places on the island named after the fairies - "na Sithein". Sith is a fairy and it is interesting to note that the same word means "peace".
Approximately half way up the glen, our vehicle was abandoned and our adventure on foot began. It took us about half an hour to get there, but on a plateau, below a cliff top, sat a fairy house.
Circular, it measured 20ft across with 2ft walls, and was originally roofed with turf supported by posts so as to be below the ground.
Inside the circle, you could make out where the rooms and the fireplace had been. The inhabitants could not have been more than a foot tall.
"This house was built long ago by the small people who were driven off the best ground by the incomers - most probably the Scots arriving from Ireland," explained Sir Iain. According to him, the Small People always remained on the fringe of good arable land because they were called upon to help out in the harvests. They had their own religion and their own language, and had a reputation for mischief.
Over the centuries they simply disappeared, and it is their spirits which inhabit this spectacular landscape to this day.
Returning to the car, we walked alongside a wooded stream known as Allt an Leth-Sithein, which in Gaelic means "burn of the half-fairy".
It sounds absurd, but I could swear that we were being watched by eyes in the hills all around us.
CRAIGMILLAR CASTLE
CRAIGMILLAR Castle stands on the outskirts of Edinburgh. An L- Plan tower overlooking the capital, it dates from around 1374 and has witnessed many of the great events of Scotland's history, not least when it was used as a residence by Mary, Queen of Scots, and her grandfather, James IV.
When James IV was killed at the Battle of Flodden in 1513, the people of Scotland refused to believe that he was dead. There were many who believed that he had simply gone off on a crusade and that he would eventually return and it was around this time that the first sightings of his black horse were reported in the vicinity of Craigmillar.
Last summer I decided to visit Craigmillar Castle and take some photographs.
It was a warm, bright day and the sun was on the wrong side of the castle walls for a picture, so I climbed over a fence and walked around to the field below the building. There was a black horse.
Now it may not have been the same horse that James IV used to ride when he used Craigmillar as his bachelor pad 500 years ago.
Nor could it have been the same steed that carried him to Newhaven to supervise work on the Great Michael, the enormous battleship he built to terrorise the English, but its presence did help to confirm the legend.

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