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Citation: Elliott D, Bindra R, Roychowdhury S, Comans T, Fletcher J. Collagenase injections for Dupuytren’s in Australian public hospitals: a cost analysis. Aust J Plast Surg. 2019;2(1):17–22.
Method: A retrospective audit of hospital data was conducted to determine the cost of single-digit surgical fasciectomy compared to CCH treatment delivered in an outpatient setting. Medicare Benefits Schedule coding was used to identify surgical fasciectomy patients between March 2014 and April 2015. The CCH group was prospectively followed from June 2014 to March 2016.
Results: Thirty-seven patients were successfully treated with CCH, with one patient requiring two injections. This group required less follow-up visits (4.0 outpatient clinic and 4.9 allied health) compared to the surgical group (n=38; 4.4 outpatient clinic and 6.1 allied health). The total cost of treatment for the CCH group was AU$2589 compared to a mean total of AU$6155 for the surgical group (AU$3574–AU$14,599)—a potential saving of AU$119,698.
More recently, enzymatic digestion of the diseased tissue and disruption of the contracted cord has been proposed as an alternative to surgery. In a phase III trial conducted by Badalamente et al,2 collagenase clostridium histolyticum (CCH) injections were shown to be safe and effective for correction of single finger contracture with a low recurrence rate. Their protocol involved the injection of CCH into the diseased cord followed by manipulation and extension of the finger a day later. Treatment is delivered under local anaesthesia in the outpatient setting. In the USA, CCH was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of Dupuytren’s contracture in 2010.
The widespread adoption of CCH (Xiaflex, Endo Pharmaceuticals, PA, USA) in Australia has been hampered by multiple factors. The drug has been denied coverage under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) on the basis of its reported efficacy of 50 per cent (compared to 67 per cent for surgery) and a higher recurrence rate.2–4 Therefore, a public hospital offering the treatment has to bear the cost of the injection. As there is no specific diagnosis related group (DRG) code for chemical fasciectomy, there is no defined process for reimbursement of the activity performed at an outpatient service. Although this would seemingly be more cost-effective, it is unclear who bears the cost of the injection, as it is a medical treatment for a surgical condition.
The purpose of this paper is to compare the cost of CCH treatment in an outpatient setting in the Australian public system with single-digit fasciectomy.
We conducted a retrospective audit of hospital data to calculate the cost of surgical fasciectomy. Costings were calculated internally in collaboration with finance and compliance staff using the Medicare benefits schedule (MBS) code 46372 to identify patients who underwent fasciectomy over a 12-month period from March 2014 to April 2015. Only cost calculations for single-digit fasciectomy were included in order to make this cohort comparable to the CCH treatment group. The CCH cost was calculated from participants in a prospective study from June 2014 to March 2016.
The total cost for fasciectomy procedure included all hospital and operating theatre-related expenses such as: medical and surgical costs, operating theatre costs, anaesthetic staff costs, allied health costs, blood products, medical imaging, pathology, pharmacy, prosthesis costs and ward costs. All costs included direct costs and related overheads. Actual figures were obtained from the hospital cost centre in our billing department and were calculated on a cost per patient per hour basis. Overhead costs were calculated as a percentage of total lease cost on a time usage basis. Queensland Payroll assisted in providing the cost of wages of the varied health staff at an hourly rate.
The cost of surgical outpatient and hand therapy appointments were calculated in a similar fashion. The mean values of each of these items were included to estimate the total direct cost of fasciectomy itself and the cost of the outpatient clinic visits related to the surgery or CCH administration. The cost of CCH treatment included the cost of the drug and additional costs of clinic visits and hand therapy costs.
The pathway for patients undergoing CCH treatment was an initial surgical consultation, a clinic visit for the injection, a subsequent visit for joint manipulation and two outpatient reviews at one and three months respectively. The hand therapy protocol was one initial consult for documentation of contracture severity and objective measurements followed by a visit immediately after manipulation for splinting and two subsequent visits for splint adjustment and finger motion exercises.
The surgical group had an initial consultation and then post-operative outpatient followup at one week, one month and three months. Hand therapy following surgery was one initial visit for splinting and subsequent visits as needed for splint adjustment or hand range of motion. The outpatient follow-up in both groups was designed as a guideline. Ongoing subsequent surgical review or hand therapy was customised to the individual patient on an as required basis.
We identified 38 patients who underwent single-digit fasciectomy during the review period. The actual total cost per patient was calculated and compared to CCH treatment (Table 1). The mean cost of surgery for single-digit fasciectomy was AU$4609.61 (AU$2761.44–AU$10,928.67). In terms of fasciectomy component cost, the highest was theatre, followed by medical and surgical staff and then anaesthetic staff. The cheapest variables were imaging, pathology and pharmacy.
Outpatient visits for the fasciectomy group were compared with the CCH group (Table 2). The single-digit fasciectomy group required a mean of 4.4 (2–9) surgical outpatient visits. The mean cost for a single surgical outpatient appointment was AU$303.14 per visit (AU$180.80–AU$4165.20) making the total mean outpatient cost AU$1339.88 (AU$606.28–AU$2728.26). The high cost in some patients was related to preoperative work-up for anaesthesia. The mean number of occupational therapy visits was 6.13 (1–28) in the surgical group with a mean cost of AU$206.27 (AU$33.65–AU$942.20).
A total of 37 patients underwent 38 CCH injections from June 2014 to March 2016. The cost of the drug in our hospital was AU$1176 per vial. At three-month follow up, a reduction in extension deficit to <5 degrees of full extension for the measured joint was achieved in 48 per cent of joints—66 % metacarpophalangeal (MCP) joint and 19 per cent proximal interphalangeal (PIP) joint. Mean fixed flexion deformity improved by 40 degrees and 25 degrees for MCP joint and PIP joint disease respectively. Mean active range of motion improved by 39 degrees and 18 degrees respectively. While not all patients received full correction, as is usual with all forms of treatment for Dupuytren’s contracture, all but one patient was satisfied with the correction achieved. Only one patient requested a second injection for incomplete correction during the study, thereby the mean drug cost was calculated at AU$1206.15.
The CCH group of patients required a mean of 4 (3–8) visits in outpatient clinic and 4.9 (3–16) in hand therapy. Using an average estimated cost of AU$250.06 per clinic visit and AU$405.50 for the manipulation, we estimated the total cost of outpatient visits to be AU$1405.7.4 The occupational therapy cost for the CCH group was AU$164.60 including the cost of splinting and other materials.
Our study compares the actual cost of single-digit surgical fasciectomy in a retrospective cohort with the cost of CCH in a prospective group. Our cost calculation includes all aspects of care: medication, procedure and therapy. Our findings suggest that CCH injection treatment has a substantially lower cost when compared to surgery for management of single-digit Dupuytren’s contracture. It is substantially cheaper not withstanding indirect costs to the patient for expenses related to fewer clinic visits and possible earlier recovery as suggested by fewer therapy visits. Additionally, by shifting the treatment delivery to the outpatient, CCH treatment increases the availability of theatre for other surgical procedures in a system that is already burdened by the pressures of long surgical waiting times. Our highest cost variable in our fasciectomy analysis was theatre costs.
Our study design has some weaknesses. The surgical group cost was calculated retrospectively and while we only calculated costs related to single-finger contracture, the severity of disease in the two cohorts may not be the same. It is also possible that there is an inherent bias in selecting patients with milder forms of contracture for CCH treatment. Nevertheless, the injection costs are lower than surgery. Additionally, we only report on the immediate outcome of the injection and have not reported on efficacy in the medium- to long-term.
In conclusion, our study highlights the substantially lower total cost of CCH injection for management of single-digit Dupuytrens contracture when compared with surgical fasciectomy. Even accounting for the relatively high cost of the medication, the CCH pathway is cheaper, can be delivered in the outpatients department and patients require less occupational therapy and allied services. The increased availability of operating rooms for other procedures is another vital saving to the public health service. There remains a role for surgery in patients with Dupuytren’s contractures that are severe or involve multiple fingers. Our study suggests that healthcare services in Australian should consider making funding available for CCH treatment as an alternative to surgery in selected patients.
Khashan M, Smitham PJ, Khan WS, Goddard NJ. Suppl 2: Dupuytren’s disease: review of the current literature. Open Orthop J. 2011;5:283.
Badalamente MA, Hurst LC. Efficacy and safety of injectable mixed collagenase subtypes in the treatment of Dupuytren’s contracture. J Hand Surg. 2007;32(6):767–74.
Hurst LC, Badalamente MA, Hentz VR, Hotchkiss RN, Kaplan FT, Meals RA, Smith TM, Rodzvilla J. Injectable collagenase clostridium histolyticum for Dupuytren’s contracture. New Engl J Med. 2009;361(10):968–79.
Gilpin D, Coleman S, Hall S, Houston A, Karrasch J, Jones N. Injectable collagenase Clostridium histolyticum: a new nonsurgical treatment for Dupuytren’s disease. J Hand Surg. 2010;35(12):2027–38.
Verheyden JR. Early outcomes of a sequential series of 144 patients with Dupuytren’s contracture treated by collagenase injection using an increased dose, multi-cord technique. J Hand Surg-Eur Vol. 2015;40(2):133–40.
Muppavarapu RC, Waters MJ, Leibman MI, Belsky MR, Ruchelsman DE. Clinical outcomes following collagenase injections compared to fasciectomy in the treatment of Dupuytren’s contracture. Hand. 2015;10(2):260–65.
Sanjuan-Cerveró R, Vazquez-Ferreiro P, Gomez-Herrero D, Carrera-Hueso FJ. Efficacy of collagenase clostridium histolyticum for dupuytren disease: a systematic review. Revista Iberoamericana de Cirugía de la Mano [Ibero-American Journal of Hand Surgery]. 2017;45(02):070–88.
Zhou C, Hovius SE, Slijper HP, Feitz R, Van Nieuwenhoven CA, Pieters AJ, Selles RW. Collagenase clostridium histolyticum versus limited fasciectomy for Dupuytren’s contracture: outcomes from a multicenter propensity score matched study. Plast Reconstr Surg. 2015;136(1):87–97.
Peimer CA, Blazar P, Coleman S, Kaplan FT, Smith T, Tursi JP, Cohen B, Kaufman GJ, Lindau T. Dupuytren contracture recurrence following treatment with collagenase clostridium histolyticum (CORDLESS study): 3-year data. J Hand Surg. 2013;38(1):12–22.
Mehta S, Belcher HJ. A single-centre cost comparison analysis of collagenase injection versus surgical fasciectomy for Dupuytren’s contracture of the hand. J Plast Reconstr Aes. 2014;67(3):368–72.
Cerveró RS, Ferrando NF, Jornet JP. Use of resources and costs associated with the treatment of Dupuytren’s contracture at an orthopedics and traumatology surgery department in Denia (Spain): collagenase clostridium hystolyticum versus subtotal fasciectomy. BMC Musculoskel Dis. 2013;14(1):293.
Atroshi I, Strandberg E, Lauritzson A, Ahlgren E, Waldén M. Costs for collagenase injections compared with fasciectomy in the treatment of Dupuytrens contracture: a retrospective cohort study. BMJ Open. 2014;4(1):e004166.
Chen NC, Shauver MJ, Chung KC. Cost-effectiveness of open partial fasciectomy, needle aponeurotomy, and collagenase injection for Dupuytren contracture. J Hand Surg. 2011;36(11):1826–34.


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As the heading suggests, today I am taking you through a little bit of what happens during a newborn session at my home studio. My home studio is located in Abilene, TX off N 10TH ST and Pioneer. Conveniently located right off of Winters freeway.
I start off a newborn session with the family portraits first. I keep the studio warm and toasty for baby’s comfort and for that reason, we quickly jump into the family pictures before parents start sweating! If you have a toddler/older siblings, they would be next after the family portraits while I still have their attention and they’re still content. I help with posing through the whole process and adjusting clothing, hair, hands as needed to make sure you all are picture perfect!
Once we have the family portion out of the way, I am able to work with just the baby. Even with a happy baby this portion of the session could take 90 minutes minimum. In order to do all the squishy and cute poses I recommend parents bring in their baby between 6-20 days after birth. This baby was 14 days old and did great! To get baby settled and used to me posing them, I start them off wrapped. This usually relaxes them for the remainder of the session. Of course, every baby is different! I have had babies that did not want be unwrapped or be completely naked. That is okay, there is still a lot that can be done to give you variety in your gallery.
I am very big on details and getting everything perfect for my shot. You will see me move babies hands and feet and place them just right or me smoothing the fabric that the baby is laying on. I really believe these details make a different in newborn photography. My goal every time is to not only provide you with precious images but to give you images that you’d love to display in your home.
Excellent question. I have tried all sorts of different photography. I immediately eliminated events from the list. I have personally never enjoyed going to events so I knew that is not where my heart lies. I have come to realize I love studio work and even more recently, that newborn photography is my jam. I love babies, I love connecting with their mama’s, the little outfits, the cute poses, and best of all. They are not mobile yet so they can’t run away from me! It is really hard to put into words but I enjoy everything about working with newborns. This year I decided to focus more on maternity – one year so you will be seeing less outdoor work and more bellies and babies! Looking through the gallery of behind the scenes photos I had taken by KaLeigh, I couldn’t believe how happy I looked in the pictures. I didn’t need confirmation that I love what I do, I knew that already but I had never seen myself in this way before.
« Want a FREE Milestone Session? Read me!

industry_corpus2: Others


text:
I’m Yasemin Inal, one of only 300 High Performance Coaches in the world!
What most people do when they can’t seem to reach their dreams is stuff them back inside, thinking they can just go on with life and forget about it.
If you’re here, chances are you want MORE!
And that’s why I created my TWO Signature one-on-one programs to help passionate entrepreneurs like YOU design their dream lives and businesses.
Here’s your chance to join me personally for 3 MONTHS as I teach you the strategies that the world’s highest performers use to THRIVE in life and in business!
Twelve (12) 60-minute private coaching calls with me, filled with mind-blowing strategies to elevate your life and business.
Unlimited email access to pick my brain for the entire 12 weeks.
BONUS: Instant Access to my exclusive online course, The Dream Blueprint: 7 Steps to Fulfilling Your Dreams In A World of Distractions (Value: $497).
LIMITED BONUS: 1 FREE Ticket to High Performance Academy live event in California (Value: $997) and a chance to mastermind with me there in person.
Your investment for High Performance 1:1 Coaching is $5,997 or 3 payments of $2,250.
Yasemin Inal is a high-performance coach whose strategies and approach is rooted in helping you thrive as a whole person, helping you create the ever-elusive balance you need to thrive in all areas of your life. She is knowledgeable and easy to talk to and helps you create daily habits and rituals that become powerful change agents. Following a session with her, you find yourself thinking differently which leads to making better decisions to help you reach new heights. Yasemin is proof that her coaching works; she has created incredible strides in her business and life and shares powerful strategies to help you reach your goals.
I really enjoyed my coaching with Yasemin. All the strategies she taught me are really beneficial and practical. I am a Master’s student and a lot of what she taught me about High Performance resonated with me as a graduate student. It helped me stay balanced, manage my focus, increase my productivity, stay energized throughout the day, and get clear about my long-term goals. If you are interested in taking any area of your life to the next level in a balanced and holistic way, I would highly recommend working with Yasemin.
I used to think hard work and dedication were the keys to success. Now I know for a fact that High Performance MINDSET and CONSISTENT ACTION will get you EXACTLY what you want, in life and business!
Assess and re-target your biggest digital asset, your website!
You have a choice to make. You can keep doing what you’ve been doing and take years to amplify your business, or you can hire a coach who’s been in your shoes to help you shorten your learning curve.
Your investment for Amplify Your Business 1:1 Coaching is $6,997 or 3 payments of $2,500.

industry_corpus2: Subject Education


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Samia came to us at just under a year old from Parc des felins; the zoo she was born. She is a very sweet natured girl and joined the long list of WHF, The Big Cat Sanctuary’s successful first time mums in 2012 when she gave birth to two kittens, Jua and M’wezi. (Jua remains on site with us, M’wezi has moved to another collection).
The serval is a very distinctive member of the small cat family; very slender and long-legged with large oval ears. The colouration of the coat and spotted pattern often leads to their pelts being smuggled into the fur trade and passed off as cheetah. Typically yellowish gold in colour, they can be found to be both melanistic (black) and leucistic (white). However, white individuals have never been noted in the wild and have only occurred in captive populations.
Their closest relatives within the small cat family are the Caracal and African golden cat, who are also native species of Africa. The serval has specific habitat requirements so can end up being locally restricted to small ranges within Africa, as they tend to live near watercourses.
The morphology of a serval leads it to be a specialized rodent catcher although they can be seen to take hares, flamingo and young antelope. Extremely disproportionate ears allow them to have much greater accuracy in pinpointing burrowing prey. Long legs allow the cat to have a greater field of vision, as well as being used to give a stunning blow to prey. The serval is a remarkable jumper, capable of reaching heights of up to 9 feet in one vertical jump, which can be used to catch birds in mid-flight.
They are one of the few cats within Africa that aren’t routinely persecuted by locals, as they avoid livestock and prove no threat to farmers. A bigger threat to the serval is that of the exotic pet trade and they are now being hybridized with domestic cats to produce the domestic breed, the Savannah.

industry_corpus2: Agriculture & Fisheries


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We are proud to provide one of the most efficient, affordable and professional door to door private taxi transfer service from Meina at fixed all inclusive prices. Our Meina transfer services are operated by a variety of clean, comfortable air conditioned vehicles. Depending on the passengers number we can provide private transfers using Mercedes E-class limousine, minivan, van, minibus and coach travel up to 56 seats.
Taxi transfers from Meina: it is always a good idea to book your transfer in advance. Check our taxi fare for your trip from Meina selecting a destination from the list below.
We can arrange any kind of transfer to and from Meina to your city hotel, airport, private address and to any other destination of your choice. All our chauffeurs are fully licensed professional drivers, experienced and courteous. All Vehicles are licensed and insured.
You can book online transfers from Meina to all destinations listed above. For other transfers in Milan area please visit also the Milan transfer, shuttle and taxi service page.

industry_corpus2: Transportation


text:
Happy ‘Spring Forward’ Sunday, loves! Popping in from Raleigh…Adam & me took the long-over-due drive to see his Fam Bam after our boxing class on Saturday morning. When we pulled up in the drive, Adam’s dad was like….when was the last time you guys were here!? We realized it was at Thanksgiving! Crazy how time flies, right!? They were with us & my family in Charlotte for Christmas, tho!
Training sessions, real estate ( I went under contact on a house for my buyer this week!), my sister’s birthday and ya know…all the other things that life bring!
I had the weirdest schedule on Monday, and I just felt…. so tired!!
Later that afternoon, Adam and I headed out for a long walk. Adam was on his skateboard and I was hustling to keep up with him!
We haven’t been to our Saturday boxing class in way.too.long! We got up at 730 Saturday morning, had some coffee, breakfast, headed to boxing and then hit the road to Raleigh to visit Adam’s family!
After boxing, we popped into Atherton Mill for (more) coffee from Not Just Coffee!
I took a little walk around the block with Adams dad & his beagle, Jack but other than that we just spent the day chilin’ out and enjoying our Sunday. We will hop in the car tomorrow morning and head back to Charlotte!


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HSPI_Newsletter_Summer_2018 The Historic South Park Summer Newsletter is here. Check out what is happening in your neighborhood!
NovemberMinutes2017 Approved Minutes from November’s neighborhood meeting.


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Shock Me, Say Something Intelligent!
Don't give me that intelligent life stuff - give me something I can blow up.
I was born intelligent - education ruined me.
Beam me up, Scotty! No intelligent life on this BBS!
Quick! Bring me a beaker of wine so that I may wet my mind and say something clever!
Beam me up, Scotty, there's no intelligent life down here!
If you can't say something nice, say something surrealistic.


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The climbing peaks of Nepal can be broadly categorized into groups 'A' and 'B'. The categorization and the fee structure are made available in the following section: Please check the related fee accordingly. For the kind information, all rates are effective from 18 September 2002.
A Garbage Deposit fee of USD 250.00 payable to NMA is required to obtain permits for all 33 NMA peaks. Refunds on the Garbage Deposit shall be as per NMA provisions.

industry_corpus2: Travel & Geography


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Pisac which means "partridge" in Quechua is located 32 kms from Cusco. This is the most fascinating site after Machu Picchu due to its environment and quality of ruins. Ruins divided into 4 groups: Pisaqa, Intihuatana, and Q'Allaqasa Kinchiracay. At the foot of the mountain at an altitude of 2 800m, well known town for its great tourist craft market. But above all famous for its terraces. Mid-July to spend the festival of the "Virgen del Carmen"
- Military, he defended the southern entrance of the Sacred Valley.
- Religious terraces located above the citadel represents the wing of a partridge.
- Farm, villagers looted tombs of Incas before the arrival of archaeologists.
You will find the national flower of Peru's cantuta the trees 2 to 3 meters high, also called flower of the Inca.


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Rosemarie Clark practices yoga at Harbor Health Services in Mattapan. Photo by Kelvin Ma.
Since joining the state’s Elder Service Plan, Rosemarie Clark, 68, has gone to doctors’ appointments and physical therapy, received medications, picked up new glasses, even practiced tai chi and yoga—all under one roof, at Harbor Health Services in the Boston neighborhood of Mattapan just a few miles from her home.
Most of the funding for Clark’s care comes from Medicaid through the state’s MassHealth program. “I’ve been receiving MassHealth for quite a while now. I’ve always received the care that I needed,” said Clark, a former certified nursing assistant and medical technician who became disabled after a back injury in 2007.
The Elder Service Plan is one of the state’s PACE (Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly) programs, a national model of home- and community-based care supporting people 55 and older who need the skills of a nursing home but are able to live safely in the community with support.
It provides primary care, adult day programs, rehabilitation, meals and other resources, as well as home health services, transportation, nursing home care and hospitalizations.
PACE is covered completely by Medicaid and Medicare, programs celebrating their 50th anniversary in July. The Elder Service Plan gives community members like Clark, also enrolled in Medicare, the support they need to continue to live in their homes, a major priority for MassHealth.
As the country’s largest source of public health coverage, Medicaid is the major payer for hospitals across the U.S. caring for the lowest-income populations.
It also covers the majority of people living in nursing homes and receiving long-term community-based care. While states design their own Medicaid programs, Massachusetts and the federal government share the costs equally.
Originally part of the state’s welfare office, Medicaid began as medical assistance exclusively for older people, children, the disabled and very low-income parents. In the 1990s, Medicaid in the state was renamed MassHealth and shifted from an assistance program for limited categories of people to a public way to provide health coverage for those who could not afford it.
Expanded eligibility for Medicaid to reach more people began in many states under the federal Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2013, but MassHealth’s expansion began in earnest in 1997, allowing the program to cover people at higher income levels.
In 2006, the state further expanded eligibility as one of several approaches to provide near-universal health coverage for residents. There are now about 1.7 million MassHealth enrollees. The federal government would later use the state’s expansion as a model for the ACA.
Robin Callahan, Massachusetts’ deputy Medicaid director, said that people 50 to 64 are a good example of where state health reform and the ACA have been most critical. This is a group that “needs the security of health coverage the most” but is in “the most insecure position of being able to access it,” she said.
The biggest challenge for MassHealth is containing costs, and the program is looking at new payment models, better coordination of care among providers and more community-based options as solutions.
Massachusetts is one of seven states that offer incentives for innovative programs that improve how hospitals provide care to Medicaid beneficiaries and how payments are made for that care.
As for Clark, MassHealth has allowed her to live a more full and independent life.
“Without it, I don’t know what I would do,” she said.
Michelle Cerulli is a writer living in Brookline.

industry_corpus2: Health & Medicine


text:
I was searching for a Property and found this listing (MLS® #190019290). Please send me more information regarding 1318 Partridge Ln, Oceanside, CA, 92054. Thank you!
I'd like to request a showing of 1318 Partridge Ln, Oceanside, CA, 92054 (MLS® #190019290). Thank you!

industry_corpus2: Real Estate & Construction


text:
Miley Cyrus, The Jackson 5, Imagine Dragons, Daft Punk vs. Rage Against The Machine, J-Kwon and more.
This show was 84th in the global alternative chart.
Jason's back with a fun, summertime top 40 mix covering everything from Hip Hop to House! With the warmer weather rolling in, this is the perfect blend to get your weekend started!

industry_corpus2: Film & Entertainment


text: Ramridge Primary School will be closed Friday 1st February 2019 due to adverse weather conditions. We expect to be open Monday 4th February 2019 as usual. Apologies for an inconvenience. Thank you for your support.


text: Isaacs, Kevin Jay, 1959-. “"Dear Western" female solo.” WCSU Centennial Interview Segments. WCSU Archives, 23 May 2016. Accessed on the Web: 22 Apr. 2019.


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Beki kala Erikli was shot three times Thursday evening outside her apartment building, according to the weekly Salom. The gunman fled.
A Jewish author was shot and killed outside her Istanbul home by at least one assailant, a woman, Turkey’s main Jewish newspaper reported.
Police were investigating security camera footage as part of their investigation, the report said.
Erikli, the author of self-help books including “Living with Angels,” was in her 40s. She had lived in Britain, Germany and the United States.
Anti-Semitic violence is rare in Turkey, which has about 20,000 Jews.

industry_corpus2: Media & Journalism


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There are a number of cards that provide benefits for defeating a villain, gaining "money" for example. However I've had a bit of difficulty working out exactly when during a heroes turn a villain is defeated. Having had a couple of playthroughs (game 1, then 2&3), I have resolved the damage at the end of the turn.
As such, a hero has money they keep until their next turn, but this just doesn't feel right.
"You immediately gain the reward listed on the Villain card"
Indeed, Ethan is correct here.
Indeed, you can assign attack tokens whenever you want in your turn, and when a villain has as many attack tokens as its life, the heroes get the benefits and the villain is not active anymore (which sometimes is great when the villain has an effect during the heroes' turn). At this point you put the villain in the discard or return it.
In general you would play all your cards, and assign the attack tokens; then buy cards and finish your turn, but other orders of actions are possible and sometimes better.
At the end of the turn, if a villain has been defeated, another one arrives.

industry_corpus2: Gaming


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Harbour View Motel features rooms with panoramic harbour views from a private covered deck, it offers free bike and kayak rentals, free on-site parking and free Wi-Fi access. It is a 5-minute drive from Driving Creek Railway, the famous 309 Road and The Water Works. The heated guest rooms have a kitchenette with a microwave, a fridge and kitchenware. The lounge area offers a DVD player and a flat-screen TV. The property has a hot tub and a barbecue area. Guest laundry facilities are available. A continental breakfast is available for you to prepared yourself in your room when you are ready. It includes cereal, fruit, juice, toast, preserves and coffee. You can sit on your deck and enjoy the view.
One-Bedroom Apartment with Harbour View The Harbour View Units have a Queen/King bed in the main living area with sofa, dining table and chairs. In the separate bedroom there is two single beds. The room has a kitchenette with a two burner cook top, microwave, fridge and kitchen wares. It also had a flat screen TV with 50 shy channels. A DVD player available on request. Has an furnished outdoor deck with harbour views.
Check in is from 1.00pm onwards but can be before hand by arrangement.
Check out is by 10.00 unless arranged.
To proceed with this booking we require notification of a Visa or Mastercard Credit Card Number and Expiry Date, as well as a phone number if possible. . Your Credit Card will NOT be charged at time of booking however it is required to confirm your booking online.
Cards excepted. Visa. matercard and Amex. No surcharge for credit cards.
The guest can cancel free of charge until 7 days before arrival. The guest will be charged the first night if they cancel in the 7 days before arrival. If the guest doesn’t show up they will be charged the total price.
No show, yo will be charged for the first night and if we are unable to verify with you whether you are coming or not you will be charged for more nights.

industry_corpus2: Hospitality & Catering


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Everyone knows that a picture is worth a thousand words, and if that is the case, then video is worth a million.
Marks Media is a marketing/media agency located in Deep Creek Lake, MD. The owner, Logan Marks, started his business in 2014 and is passionate about helping clients tell their stories through beautiful imagery and content. His primary focus is on real estate marketing for the Deep Creek Lake area, but he also works in commercial videography and photography as well. Ironistic has partnered with Marks Media on a number of videography projects for clients such as Meadow Hill, Mya Hookah, and more. Whether you are looking to showcase a new product or service or share your company culture, Marks Media can help take your visual content to the next level.

industry_corpus2: Computing & Telecommunications


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This is the German Shortwave Station. Here in our studio in Berlin tonight is Mr. P. G. Wodehouse, the well known father [sic] of the inimitable Jeeves, of Bertie Worcester [sic], Lord Emsworth, Mr. Mulliner, and other delightful persons. Mr. Wodehouse has been in Germany for almost a year since German troops occupied his residence in Northern France. During that time he has finished a new novel which, I understand, is on its way to the United States for publication, and started with another one. We felt that his American readers might be interested to hear from Mr. Wodehouse, so we have invited him to this microphone to tell you in his own words how it all happened.
It is just possible that my listeners may seem to detect in this little talk of mine a slight goofiness, a certain disposition to ramble in my remarks. If so, the matter, as Bertie Wooster would say, is susceptible of a ready explanation. I have just emerged into the outer world after forty-nine weeks of Civil Internment in a German internment camp and the effects have not entirely worn off. I have not yet quite recovered that perfect mental balance for which in the past I was so admired by one and all.
It's coming back, mind you. Look me up a couple of weeks from now, and you'll be surprised. But just at the moment I feel slightly screwy and inclined to pause at intervals in order to cut out paper dolls and stick straws in my hair - or such of my hair as I still have.
This, no doubt, is always the effect of prolonged internment, and since July the twenty-first, 1940, I have been spending my time in a series of Ilags. An Ilag must not be confused with an Offlag or a Stalag. An Offlag is where captured officers go. A stalag is reserved for the rank and file. The Civil Internee gets the llag - and how he loves it!
Since I went into business for myself as an internee, I have been in no fewer than four Ilags - some more Ilaggy than others, others less Ilaggy than some. First, they put us in a prison, then in a barracks, then in a fortress. Then they took a look at me and the rest of the boys on parade one day, and got the right idea at last. They sent us off to the local lunatic asylum at Tost in Upper Silesia, and there I have been for the last forty-two weeks.
It has been in many ways quite an agreeable experience. There is a good deal to be said for internment. It keeps you out of the saloons and gives you time to catch up with your reading. You also get a lot of sleep. The chief drawback is that it means your being away from home a good deal. It is not pleasant to think that by the time I see my Pekinese again, she will have completely forgotten me and will bite me to the bone - her invariable practice with strangers. And I feel that when I rejoin my wife, I had better take along a letter of introduction, just to be on the safe side.
Young men, starting out in life, have often asked me `How can I become an Internee?' Well, there are several methods. My own was to buy a villa in Le Touquet on the coast of France and stay there till the Germans came along. This is probably the best and simplest system. You buy the villa and the Germans do the rest.
At the time of their arrival, I would have been just as pleased if they had not rolled up. But they did not see it that way, and on May the twenty-second along they came, - some on motor cycles, some on foot, but all evidently prepared to spend a long week-end.
The whole thing was very peaceful and orderly. Le Touquet has the advantage of being a sort of backwater, off the line of march. Your tendency, if you are an army making for the coast, is to carry on along the main road to Boulogne, and not to take the first turning to the left when you reach ‰taples. So the proceedings were not marred by any vulgar brawling. All that happened, as far as I was concerned, was that I was strolling on the lawn with my wife one morning, when she lowered her voice and said "Don't look now, but there comes the German army". And there they were, a fine body of men, rather prettily dressed in green, carrying machine guns.
One's reactions on suddenly finding oneself surrounded by the armed strength of a hostile power are rather interesting. There is a sense of strain. The first time you see a German soldier over your garden fence, your impulse is to jump ten feet straight up into the air, and you do so. About a week later, you find that you are only jumping five feet. And then, after you have been living with him in a small village for two months, you inevitably begin to fraternize and to wish that you had learned German at school instead of Latin and Greek. All the German I know is `Es ist schænes Wetter', I was a spent force, and we used to take out the rest of the interview in beaming at one another.
I had a great opportunity of brushing up my beaming during those two months. My villa stands in the centre of a circle of houses, each of which was occupied by German officers, who would come around at intervals to take a look at things, and the garden next door was full of Labour Corps boys. It was with these that one really got together. There was scarcely an evening when two or three of them did not drop in for a bath at my house and a beaming party on the porch afterwards.
And so, day by day, all through June and July, our quiet, happy life continued, with not a jarring incident to mar the serenity. Well, yes, perhaps one or two. One day, an official-looking gentleman with none of the Labour Corps geniality came along and said he wanted my car. Also my radio. And in addition my bicycle. That was what got under the skin. I could do without the car, and I had never much liked the radio, but I loved that bicycle. I looked him right in the eye and said `Es ist schænes Wetter' - and I said it nastily. I meant it to sting. And what did he say? He didn't say anything. What could we have said? P.S. He got the bicycle.
But these were small things, scarcely causing a ripple on the placid stream of life in the occupied areas. A perfect atmosphere of peace and goodwill continued to prevail. Except for the fact that I was not allowed out of my garden after nine at night, my movements were not restricted. Quite soon I had become sufficiently nonchalant to resume the writing of the novel which the arrival of the soldiery had interrupted. And then the order went out that all British subjects had got to report each morning at twelve o'clock at the Kommandantur down in Paris Plage.
As Paris Plage was three miles away, and they had pinched my bicycle, this was a nuisance. But I should have had nothing to complain of, if the thing had stopped there. But unfortunately it didn't. One lovely Sunday morning, as I was rounding into the straight and heading for the door of the Kommandantur, I saw one of our little group coming along with a suitcase in his hand.
This didn't look so good. I was conscious of a nameless fear. Wodehouse, old sport, I said to myself, this begins to look like a sticky day. And a few moments later my apprehensions were fulfilled. Arriving at the Kommandantur, I found everything in a state of bustle and excitement. I said "Es ist schones wetter" once or twice, but nobody took any notice. And presently the interpreter stepped forward and announced that we were all going to be interned.
It was a pretty nasty shock, coming without warning out of a blue sky like that, and it is not too much to say that for an instant the old maestro shook like a badly set blancmange. Many years ago, at a party which had started to get a bit rough, somebody once bit me on the bridge of the nose with an order of planked steak. As I had felt then, so did I feel now. That same sensation of standing in a rocking and disintegrating world.
I didn't realize at the time how much luckier I was than a great many other victims of the drag-net. All over France during that Sunday, British citizens were being picked up and taken away without being given time to pack, and for a week those in Boulogne had been living in what they stood up in at the Petit Vitesse railroad station. For some reason, Le Touquet was given a substantial break. We were allowed to go home and put a few things together, and as my home was three miles away, I was actually sent there in a car.
The soldier who escorted me was unfortunately not one of those leisurely souls who believe in taking time over one's packing. My idea had been to have a cold bath and a change and a bite to eat, and then to light a pipe and sit down and muse for a while, making notes of what to take with me and what could be left behind. His seemed to be that five minutes was ample. Eventually we compromised on ten.
I would like my biographers to make careful note of the fact that the first thing that occurred to me was that here at last was my chance to buckle down and read the complete works of William Shakespeare. It was a thing I had been meaning to do any time these last forty years, but somehow, as soon as I had got - say, Hamlet and Macbeth under my belt and was preparing to read the stuffing out of Henry the Sixth, parts one, two and three, something like the Murglow Manor Mystery would catch my eye and I would weaken.
I didn't know what interment implied - it might be for years or it might be for ever - or it might be a mere matter of weeks - but the whole situation seemed to point to the complete works of William Shakespeare, so in they went. I am happy to say that I am now crammed with Shakespeare to the brim, so, whatever else internment has done for me, I am at any rate that much ahead of the game.
It was a pang to leave my novel behind, I had only five more chapters of it to do. But space, as Jeeves would have pointed out, was of the essence, and it had to go, and is now somewhere in France. I am hoping to run into it again one of these days, for it was a nice little novel and we had some great times together.
I wonder what my listeners would have packed in my place - always remembering that there was a German soldier standing behind me all the time, shouting "Schnell" or words to that effect. I had to think quick. Eventually what I crammed in were tobacco, pencils, scribbling blocks, chocolate, biscuits, a pair of trousers, a pair of shoes, some shirts and a sock or two. My wife wanted to add a pound of butter, but I fought her off. There are practically no limits to what a pound of butter can do in warm weather in a small suitcase. If I was going to read the complete works of William Shakespeare, I preferred them unbuttered.
In the end, the only thing of importance I left behind was my passport, which was the thing I ought to have packed first. The young internee is always being asked for his passport, and if he hasn't got it, the authorities tend to look squiggle-eyes and to ask nasty questions. I had never fully realized what class distinctions were till I became an internee without a passport, thus achieving a social position somewhere in between a minor gangster and a wharf rat.
Having closed the suitcase and said goodbye to my wife and the junior dog, and foiled the attempt of the senior dog to muscle into the car and accompany me into captivity, I returned to the Kommandantur. And presently, with the rest of the gang, numbering twelve in all, I drove in a motor omnibus for an unknown destination.
That is one of the drawbacks to travelling, when you are an internee. Your destination always is unknown. It is unsettling, when you start out, not to be sure whether you are going half way across Europe or just to the next town. Actually, we were headed for Loos, a suburb of Lille, a distance of about a hundred miles. What with stopping at various points along the road to pick up other foundation members, it took us eight hours.
An internee's enjoyment of such a journey depends very largely on the mental attitude of the sergeant in charge. Ours turned out to be a genial soul, who gave us cigarettes and let us get off and buy red wine at all stops, infusing the whole thing [with] a pleasant atmosphere of the school treat. This was increased by the fact that we all knew each other pretty intimately and had hobnobbed on other occasions. Three of us were from the golf club - Arthur Grant, the Pro., Jeff the starter, and Max the caddie master. Algy, of Algy's bar in the Rue St. Jean, was there, and Alfred, of Alfred's bar in the Rue de Paris. And the rest, like Charlie Webb and Bill Illidge, who ran garages, were all well known Paris Plage figures. The thing was, therefore, practically a feast of reason and a flow of soul.
Nevertheless as the evening shadows began to fall and the effects of the red wine to wear off, we were conscious of a certain sinking feeling. We felt very far from our snug homes and not at all sure that we liked the shape of things to come.
As to what exactly was the shape of things to come, nobody seemed to know. But the general sentiment that prevailed was one of uneasiness. We feared the worst.
Nor were we greatly encouraged, when, having passed through Lille, we turned down a side lane and came through pleasant fields and under spreading trees to a forbidding-looking building which was only too obviously the local hoose-gow or calaboose. A nasty-looking man in the uniform of the French provincial police flung wide the gates and we rolled through.
Next week, - the Rover Boys in Loos Prison.
That was Mr. Wodehouse in the first broadcast of a series of weekly talks which he will give from this station.
I broke off my Odyssey of the internees of Le Touquet last week, if you remember, with our little band of pilgrims entering Loos Prison. Owing to having led a blameless life since infancy, I had never seen the interior of a calaboose before, and directly I set eyes on the official in the front office, I regretted that I was doing so now. There are moments, as we pass through life, when we gaze into a stranger's face and say to ourselves `I have met a friend'. This was not one of those occasions. There is probably nobody in the world less elfin than a French prison official, and the one now twirling a Grover Whalen moustache at me looked like something out of a film about Devil's Island.
Still, an author never quite gives up hope, and I think there was just a faint idea at the back of my mind that mine host, on hearing my name, would start to his feet with a cry of `Quoi? Monsieur Vodeouse? Embrassez-moi, maitre!' and offer me his bed for the night, adding that he had long been one of my warmest admirers and would I give his little daughter my autograph.
Nothing like that happened. He just twirled the moustache again, entered my name in a large book, - or, rather, he put down `Widhorse', the silly son of a bachelor, - and motioned to the bashi-bazouks to lead me to my cell. Or, as it turned out, the communal cell of myself, Algy of Algy's Bar and Mr. Cartmell, our courteous and popular piano-tuner. For in those piping times of war - I don't know how it is on ordinary occasions - Loos Prison was bedding out its guests three to the room.
It was now getting on for ten o'clock at night, and it was this, I discovered later, that saved us a lot of unpleasantness. Round about the hour of ten, the French prison official tends to slacken up a bit. He likes to get into something loose and relax over a good book, and this makes him go through the motions of housing a batch of prisoners quickly and perfunctorily. When I got out into the exercise yard next morning, and met some of the men who had been in the place for a week, I found that they, on arrival, had been stood with their faces to the wall, stripped to their B.V.D.s, deprived of all their belongings and generally made to feel like so many imprisoned pieces of cheese. All they did to us was take away our knives and money and leave us.
Cells in French prisons are built for privacy. Where in the gaols of America there are bars, here you have only a wall with an iron-studded door in it. You go in, and this door is slammed and locked behind you, and you find yourself in a snug little apartment measuring about twelve feet by eight. At the far end is a window and under it a bed. Against the opposite wall to the bed there stands a small table and - chained to it - a chair of the type designed for the use of Singer's Midgets. In the corner by the door is a faucet with a basin beneath it, and beyond this what Chic Sale would call a `family one-holer'. The only pictures on the walls, which are of whitewashed stone, are those drawn from time to time by French convicts - boldly executed pencil sketches very much in the vein which you would expect from French convicts.
Cartmell being the senior member of our trio, we gave him the bed, and Algy and I turned in on the floor. It was the first time I had tried dossing on a thin mattress on a granite floor, but we Wodehouses are tough stuff, and it was not long before the tired eyelids closed in sleep. My last waking thought, I remember, was that, while this was a hell of a thing to have happened to a respectable old gentleman in his declining years, it was all pretty darned interesting and that I could hardly wait to see what the morrow would bring forth.
What the morrow brought forth, at seven sharp, was a rattling of keys and the opening of a small panel in the door, through which were thrust three tin mugs containing a thin and lukewarm soup and three loaves of bread, a dark sepia in color. This, one gathered, was breakfast, and the problem arose of how to play our part in the festivities. The soup was all right. One could manage that. You just took a swallow, and then another swallow - to see if it had really tasted as bad as it had seemed to the first time, and before you knew where you were, it had gone. But how, not having knives, we were to deal with the bread presented a greater test of our ingenuity. Biting bits off it was not a practical proposition for my companions, whose teeth were not of the best: and it was no good hammering it on the edge of the table, because it simply splintered the woodwork. But there is always a way of getting around life's little difficulties, if you give your mind to it. I became bread-biter to the community, and I think I gave satisfaction. At any rate, I got the stuff apart.
At eight-thirty, the key rattled again, and we were let out for air, recreation and exercise. That is to say, we were taken into an enclosure with high brick walls, partially open to the sky, and allowed to stand there for half an hour.
There was nothing much we could do except stand, for the enclosure - constructed, apparently, by an architect who had seen the Black Hole of Calcutta and admired it - was about twelve yards long, six yards wide at the broad end, tapering off to two yards wide at the narrow end, and we had to share it with the occupants of other cells. No chance, I mean, of getting up an informal football game or a truck-meet or anything like that.
Having stood for thirty minutes, we returned to our cells, greatly refreshed, and remained there for the next twenty-three and a half hours. At twelve, we got some soup, and at five some more soup. Different kinds of soup, of course. Into the twelve o'clock ration a cabbage had been dipped - hastily, by a cook who didn't like getting his hands wet, and in the other there was a bean, actually floating about, visible to the naked eye.
Next day, the key rattled in the lock at seven, and we got soup, and at eight-thirty our scamper in the great open spaces, followed by soup at twelve and more soup at five. The day after than, the key rattled in the lock at seven, and we ... But you get the idea. What you would call a healthy, regular life, giving a man plenty of leisure for reading the Complete Works of William Shakespeare - as, if you remember, I had resolved to do.
Apart from Shakespeare, who is unquestionably a writer who takes you away from it all, what made existence tolerable was the window. I had always understood that prison cells had small windows of ground glass, placed high up near the ceiling, but ours was a spacious affair of about five feet by four, and you could open it wide and even, by standing on the bed, get a glimpse from it of a vegetable garden and fields beyond. And the air that came through it was invaluable in keeping our cell smell within reasonable bounds.
The cell smell is a great feature of all French prisons. Ours in Number Forty-Four at Loos was one of those fine, broad-shouldered, up-and-coming young smells which stand on both feet and look the world in the eye. We became very fond and proud of it, championing it hotly against other prisoners who claimed that theirs had more authority and bouquet, and when the first German officer to enter our little sanctum rocked back on his heels and staggered out backwards, we took it as almost a personal compliment. It was like hearing a tribute paid to an old friend.
Nevertheless, in spite of the interest of hobnobbing with our smell, we found time hang a little heavy on our hands. I was all right. I had my Complete Works of William Shakespeare. But Algy had no drinks to mix, and Cartmell no pianos to tune. And a piano-tuner suddenly deprived of pianos is like a tiger whose medical adviser has put it on a vegetarian diet. Cartmell used to talk to us of pianos he had tuned in the past, and sometimes he would speak easily and well of pianos he hoped to tune in the future, but it was not the same. You could see that what the man wanted was a piano now. Either that, or something to take his mind off the thing.
It was on the fourth morning, accordingly, that we addressed a petition to the German Kommandant, pointing out that, as we were civil internees, not convicts, there was surely no need for all this Ballad of Reading Gaol stuff, and asking if it would not be possible to inject a little more variety into our lives.
This appeal to Caesar worked like magic. Apparently the Kommandant, had not had a notion that we were being treated as we were - the French had thought it up all by themselves - and he exploded like a bomb. We could hear distant reverberations of his wrath echoing along the corridors, and presently there came the old, familiar rattle of keys, and pallid warders opened the doors and informed us that from now on we were at liberty to roam about the prison at will.
Everything is relative - as somebody once said - probably Shakespeare in his Complete Works - and I cannot remember when I have felt such a glorious sense of freedom as when I strolled out of my cell, leaving the door open behind me, and started to saunter up and down outside.
And, even if it shows a vindictive spirit, I must confess that the pleasure was increased by the sight of the horror and anguish on the faces of the prison personnel. If there is one man who is a stickler for tradition and etiquette, for what is done and what is not done, it is the French prison warder, and here were tradition and etiquette being chucked straight into the ash-can, and nothing to be done about it. I suppose their feelings were rather what those of a golf professional would be, if he had to submit to seeing people dancing on his putting greens in high-heeled shoes.
In the end, we got quite sorry for the poor chaps, and relented to the extent of allowing them to lock us in for the night. It was pathetic to see how they brightened up at this concession. It paved the way to an understanding, and before we left the place we had come to be on quite friendly terms. One of them actually unbent to the extent of showing us the condemned cell - much as the host at a country house takes his guest round the stables.
Our great topic of conversation, as we strolled about the corridors, was, of course, where we were going from here, and when. For we could not believe that Loos Prison was anything but a temporary resting place. And we were right. A week after we had arrived, we were told to line up in the corridor, and presently the Kommandant appeared and informed us that, after our papers had been examined, we were to pack and be ready to leave.
Men of sixty and over, he added, would be released and sent home, so these lucky stiffs went and stood to one side in a row, looking like a beauty chorus. On the strength of being fifty-eight and three quarters, I attempted to join them, but was headed back. Fifty-eight and three-quarters was good, I was given to understand, but not good enough.
I did not brood about this much, however, for it has just occurred to me that, having left my passport behind, I might quite easily have to stay on after the others had gone wherever they were going. Fortunately, I had twelve stout fellows from Le Touquet to testify to my identity and respectability, and they all lined up beside me and did their stuff. The Kommandant, was plainly staggered by this cloud of witnesses, and in the end I just got under the wire.
This was on the Saturday evening, and far into the night the place buzzed with speculation. I don't know who first started the rumor that we were going to the barracks at Liége, but he turned out to be quite right. That was where we were headed for, and at eleven o'clock next morning we were given our mid-day soup and hustled out and dumped into vans and driven to the station.
As a matter of fact, all through my period of internment I noticed this tendency on the part of the Germans to start our little expeditions off with a whoop and a rush and then sort of lose interest. It reminded me of Hollywood. When you are engaged to work at Hollywood, you get a cable saying that it is absolutely vital that you be there by ten o'clock on the morning of June the first. Ten-five will be too late, and as for getting there on June the second, that means ruin to the industry. So you rush about and leap into aeroplanes, and at ten o'clock on June the first you are at the studio, being told that you cannot see your employer now, as he has gone to Palm Springs. Nothing happens after this till October the twentieth, when you are given an assignment and told that every moment is precious.
It is the same with the Germans in this matter of making trains. They like to leave a margin.
Summing up my experience as a gaol-bird, I would say that a prison is all right for a visit, but I wouldn't live there, if you gave me the place. On my part, at any rate, there was no moaning at the bar when I left Loos. I was glad to go. The last I saw of the old Alma Mater was the warder closing the door of the van and standing back with the French equivalent of `Right away'.
He said `Au revoir' to me - which I thought a little tactless.
The last instalment of my serial narrative entitled `How To Be An Internee And Like It' ended, you may remember, with our band of pilgrims catching the train from Lille by the skin of our teeth - that is to say, with a bare eight hours and twenty minutes to spare. The next thing that happened was the journey to Liége.
One drawback to being an internee is that, when you move from spot to spot, you have to do it in company with eight hundred other men. This precludes anything in the nature of travel de luxe. We made the twenty-four hour trip in a train consisting of those `Quarante Hommes, Huit Chevaux' things - in other words, cattle trucks. I had sometimes seen them on sidings on French railroads in times of peace, and had wondered what it would be like to be one of the Quarante Hommes. I now found out, and the answer is that it is pretty darned awful. Eight horses might manage to make themselves fairly comfortable in one of these cross-country loose-boxes, but forty men are cramped. Every time I stretched my legs, I kicked a human soul. This would not have mattered so much, but every time the human souls stretched their legs, they kicked me. The only pleasant recollection I have of that journey is the time when we were let out for ten minutes on the banks of the Meuse.
Arriving at Liége, and climbing the hill to the barracks, we found an atmosphere of unpreparedness. Germany at that time was like the old woman who lived in a shoe. She had so many adopted children that she didn't know what to do with them. As regards our little lot, I had a feeling that she did not really want us, but didn't like to throw us away.
The arrangements for our reception at Liége seemed incomplete. It was as if one had got to a party much too early. Here, for instance, were eight hundred men who were going to live mostly on soup - and though the authorities knew where to lay their hands on some soup all right, nothing had been provided to put it in.
And eight hundred internees can't just go to the cauldron and lap. For one thing, they would burn their tongues, and for another the quick swallowers would get more than their fair share. The situation was one that called for quick thinking, and it was due to our own resourcefulness that the problem was solved. At the back of the barrack yard there was an enormous rubbish heap, into which Belgian soldiers through the ages had been dumping old mess tins, old cans, cups with bits chipped off them, bottles, kettles and containers for motor oil. We dug these out, gave them a wash and brush up, and there we were. I had the good fortune to secure one of the motor oil containers. It added to the taste of the soup just that little something that the others hadn't got.
Liége bore the same resemblance to a regular prison camp, like the one we were eventually to settle down in at Tost, which a rough scenario does to a finished novel. There was a sort of rudimentary organization - that is to say, we were divided into dormitories, each with a Room Warden - but when I think of Tost, with its Camp Captain, Camp Adjutants, Camp Committees and so on, Liége seems very primitive. It was also extraordinarily dirty, as are most places which have recently been occupied by Belgian soldiers. A Belgian soldier doesn't consider home is home, unless he can write his name in the alluvial deposits on the floor.
We spent a week at Liége, and, looking back, I can hardly believe that our stay there lasted only a mere seven days. This is probably due to the fact that there was practically nothing to do but stand around. We shared the barracks with a number of French military prisoners, and as we were not allowed to mix with them, we had to confine ourselves to a smallish section of the barrack yard. There was not room to do anything much except stand, so we stood. I totted up one day the amount of standing I had done between reveille and lights out - including parades and queuing up for meals - and it amounted to nearly six hours. The only time we were not standing was when we were lying on our beds in the afternoon. For we had beds at Liége, which was about the only improvement on the dear old prison we had left.
Parades took place at eight in the morning and eight in the evening, and as far as they were concerned I did not object to having to stand each time for fifty minutes or so, for they provided solid entertainment for the thoughtful mind. You might think that fifty minutes was a long time for eight hundred men to get themselves counted, but you would have understood, if you had seen us in action. I don't know why it was, but we could never get the knack of parading. We meant well, but we just didn't seem able to click.
The proceedings would start with the Sergeant telling us to form fives. This order having been passed along the line by the linguists who understood German, we would nod intelligently and form fours, then threes, then sixes. And when eventually, just in time to save the Sergeant from having a nervous breakdown, we managed to get into fives, was this the end? No, sir. It was not an end, but a beginning. What happened then was that Old Bill in Row Forty-Two would catch sight of Old George in Row Twenty-Three and shuffle across to have a chat with him, a cigarette hanging from his lower lip.
Time marches on. Presently, Old Bill, having heard all Old George has to say about the European situation, decides to shuffle back - only to find that his place has been filled up, like a hole by the tide. This puzzles him for a moment, but he soon sees what to do. He forms up as the seventh man of a row, just behind Old Percy, who has been chatting with Old Fred and has just come back and lined up as Number Six.
A Corporal with sheep-dog blood in him now comes into the picture. He cuts Bill and Percy out of the flock and chivvies them around for a while, and after a good deal of shouting the ranks are apparently in order once more.
But is this the end? Again no. The Sergeant, the Corporal, and a French soldier interpreter now walk the length of the ranks, counting. They then step aside and go into a sort of football huddle. A long delay. Something is wrong. The word goes round that we are one short, and the missing man is believed to be Old Joe. We discuss this with growing interest. Has Old Joe escaped? Maybe the jailer's daughter smuggled him in a file in a meat pie.
No. Here comes Old Joe, sauntering along with a pipe in his mouth and eyeing us in an indulgent sort of way, as who should say `Hullo, boys. Playing soldiers, eh? May I join in?' He is thoroughly cursed - in German by the Sergeant, in French by the interpreter and in English by us - and takes his place in the parade.
As practically the whole of the personnel has left the ranks to cluster round and listen to the Sergeant talking to Old Joe, it is now necessary to count us again. This is done, and there is another conference. This time, in some mysterious way, we have become six short, and a discouraged feeling grows among us. It looks as if we were losing ground.
A Priest now steps forward. He is a kind of liaison officer between us and the Germans. He asks `Have the six men who came from Ghent registered at the bureau?' But Lord Peter Wimsey is not going to solve the mystery as easily as that. Apparently they have, and there follows another huddle. Then all Room Wardens are invited to join the conference, and it is announced that we are to return to our dormitories, where the Room Wardens will check up their men and assemble them.
My dormitory - Fifty-Two B - goes to the length of getting a large sheet of cardboard and writing on it in chalk the words `Zwansig Manner, Stimmt'- which our linguist assures us means `Twenty Men, All Present', and when the whistle blows again for the renewal of the parade, I hold this in front of me like a London sandwich-man. It doesn't get a smile from Teacher, which is disappointing, but this is perhaps not [to] be wondered at, for he is very busy trying to count us again in our peculiar formation. For Old Bill has once more strolled off to Old George and has got into an argument with him about whether yesterday's coffee tasted more strongly of gasoline than today's. Bill thinks Yes - George isn't so sure.
They are chased back by the Corporal, now baying like a bloodhound, and there is another conference. We are now five short. The situation seems to be at a deadlock, with no hope of ever finding a formula, when some bright person - Monsieur Poirot, perhaps - says, `How about the men in the hospital?' These prove to be five in number, and we are dismissed. We have spent a pleasant and instructive fifty minutes, and learned much about our fellow men.
Much the same thing happens when we line up at seven a.m. for breakfast, and at eleven-thirty and seven p.m. for lunch and supper - except that here we are in a movement, and so can express ourselves better. For if we are a little weak on keeping the ranks when standing still, we go all haywire when walking, and not many steps are required to turn us into something like a mob charging out of a burning building.
Meals are served from large cauldrons outside the cookhouse door at the far end of the barrack yard, and the Corporal, not with very much hope in his voice, for he has already seen us in action, tells us to form fours. We do so, and for a while it looks as if the thing were really going to be a success this time. Then it suddenly occurs to Old Bill, Old George, Old Joe, and Old Percy, together with perhaps a hundred and twenty of their fellow internees, that by leaving their places at the tail of the procession and running round and joining the front row, they will get theirs quicker. They immediately proceed to do this, and are at once followed by about eighty other rapid thinkers, who have divined their thought-processes and have come to the conclusion that the idea is a good one. Twenty minutes later, a white-haired Corporal with deep furrows in his forehead has restored the formation into fours, and we start again.
On a good morning - I mean a morning when Old Bill and his associates were in their best form - it would take three-quarters of an hour for the last in line to reach the cookhouse, and one used to wonder what it would be like on a rainy day.
Fortunately, the rainy day never came. The weather was still fine when, a week from our arrival, we were loaded into vans and driven to the station, our destination being the Citadel of Huy, about twenty-five miles away - another Belgian army center.
If somebody were to ask me whose quarters I would prefer to take over - those of French convicts or Belgian soldiers, I would find it hard to say. French convicts draw pictures on the walls of their cells which bring the blush of shame to the cheek of modesty, but they are fairly tidy in their habits - whereas Belgian soldiers, as I have mentioned before, make lots of work for their successors. Without wishing to be indelicate, I may say that, until you have helped to clean out a Belgian soldiers' latrine, you ain't seen nuttin'.
It was my stay at Liege, and subsequently at the Citadel of Huy, that gave me that wholesome loathing for Belgians which is the hall-mark of the discriminating man. If I never see anything Belgian again in this world, it will be all right with me.
Before beginning my talk tonight - the fourth of a series of five dealing with the five phases of my internment - I should like to say another few words on another subject.
The Press and Public of England seem to have jumped to the conclusion that I have been in some way bribed or intimidated into making these broadcasts. This is not the case.
I did not `make a bargain', as they put it, and buy my release by agreeing to speak over the radio. I was released because I am sixty years old - or shall be in October. The fact that I was free a few months before that date was due to the efforts of my friends. As I pointed out in my second talk, if I had been sixty when I was interned, I should have been released at the end of the first week.
My reason for broadcasting was a simple one. In the course of my period of internment I received hundreds of letters of sympathy from American readers of my books, who were strangers to me, and I was naturally anxious to let them know how I had got on.
Under existing conditions, it was impossible to answer these letters - and I did not want to be so ungrateful and ungracious as to seem to be ignoring them, and the radio suggested itself as a solution.
I will now go on to my experiences in the Citadel of Huy - the last of the places where we were lodged before we finally settled at Tost, in Upper Silesia.
In putting [together] these talks on How To Be An Internee Without Previous Training, I find myself confronted by the difficulty of deciding what aspects of my daily life, when in custody, will have entertainment value for listeners.
When the war is over and I have my grandchildren as an audience, this problem, of course, will not arise. The unfortunate little blighters will get the whole thing, night after night, without cuts. But now I feel that a certain process of selection is necessary. A good deal that seems to an internee thrilling and important is so only to himself. Would it interest you, for instance, to hear that it took us four hours to do the twenty-five mile journey from Liége to Huy, and that there were moments during the walk up the mountain-side when the old boy thought he was going to expire? No, I thought not.
It is for this reason that I propose to pass fairly lightly over my five weeks' stay at Huy. Don't let that name confuse you, by the way. It is spelled H-u-y, and in any other country but Belgium would be pronounced Hoo-ey. So remember that, when I say Huy, I don't mean `we'- I mean Huy.
The Citadel of Huy is one of those show places they charge you two francs to go into in times of peace. I believe it was actually built in the time of the Napoleonic wars, but its atmosphere is purely mediaeval. It looks down on the River Meuse from the summit of a mountain - the sort of mountain Gutzon Borglum would love to carve pictures on - and it is one of those places where, once you're in, you're in. Its walls are fourteen feet thick, and the corridors are lighted by bays, in which are narrow slits of windows. It is through these, if you are a married man with a wife living in Belgium, that you shout to her when she comes to visit you. She stands on the slope below, as high up as she can get, and shouts to you. Neither can see the other, and the whole thing is like something out of Il Trovatore.
The only place in the building from which it is possible to get a view of somebody down below is the window of what afterwards became the canteen room. Men would rush in there and fling themselves through the window and lie face down on the broad sill. It was startling till one got used to it, and one never quite lost the fear that they would lose their heads and jump. But this lying on sills was forbidden later, as were most things at Huy, where the slogan seemed to be `Go and see what the internees are doing, and tell them they mustn't'. I remember an extra parade being called, so that we might be informed that stealing was forbidden. This hit us very hard.
These extra parades were a great feature of life at Huy, for our Kommandant seemed to have a passion for them.
Mind you, I can find excuses for him. If I had been in his place, I would have ordered extra parades myself. His headquarters were down in the town, and there was no road connecting the Citadel with the outer world - just a steep, winding path. So that, when he came to visit us, he had to walk. He was a fat, short-legged man in the middle sixties, and walking up steep, winding paths does something to fat, short-legged men who are not as young as they were. Duty called him now and then to march up the hill and to march down again, but nothing was going to make him like it.
I picture him starting out, full of loving kindness - all sweetness and light, as it were - and gradually becoming more and more soured as he plodded along. So that when he eventually came to journey's end with a crick in the back and the old dogs feeling as if they were about to burst like shrapnel, and saw us loafing around at our ease, the sight was too much for him and he just reached for his whistle and blew it for an extra parade.
Extra parades were also called two or three times a day by the Sergeant, when there was any announcement to be made. At Tost we had a noticeboard, on which camp orders were posted each day, but this ingenious system had not occurred to anyone at Huy. The only way they could think of there of establishing communication between the front office and the internees was to call a parade. Three whistles would blow, and we would assemble in the yard, and after a long interval devoted to getting into some sort of formation we would be informed that there was a parcel for Omer - or that we must shave daily - or that we must not smoke on parade - or that we must not keep our hands in our pockets on parade - or that we might buy playing cards - (and next day that we might not buy playing cards) - or that boys must not cluster round the guard-room trying to scrounge food from the soldiers - or that there was a parcel for Omer.
I remember once, in the days when I used to write musical comedies, a chorus girl complaining to me with some bitterness that if a carpenter had to drive a nail into a flat, the management would be sure to call a chorus rehearsal to watch him do it, and I could now understand just how she had felt. I don't know anything that brings the grimness of life home to one more than hearing three whistles blow just as you are in the middle of a bath - and leaping into your clothes without drying - and lining up in the yard and waiting twenty minutes at attention - and then being informed that there is a parcel for Omer.
It was not that we had anything against Omer. We all liked him - and never better than when he had just had a parcel, but what embittered us was that there was never a parcel for anyone else. He happened to have been interned right on the spot where all his friends and admirers lived, while the rest of us were far from home and had not yet been able to get in touch with our wives. It was that that made these first weeks of internment such a nightmare. Not receiving parcels was merely a side-issue. It would have been nice to have had some, but we could do without them. But we did wish that we could have got some information as to how our wives were getting on. It was only later at Tost, that we began to receive letters and to be able to write them.
The few letters which did trickle in to Huy from time to time were regarded by the authorities with strong suspicion. After a parade had been called, for us to watch them given out, their recipients would be allowed a couple of minutes to read them - then they would have to hand them back to the Corporal, who tore them up. And when Omer got one of his parcels, its contents would all be opened before he was permitted to take them away - from the first can of sardines to the last bit of chocolate. I believe this was due entirely to the men who, at the end of the last war, wrote books telling how clever they had been at escaping from German prison camps by means of codes sent by letter and compasses and so on enclosed in potted meat. They meant no harm, but they certainly made it tough for us.
`Tough' is the adjective I would use to describe the whole of those five weeks at Huy. The first novelty of internment had worn off, and we had become acutely alive to the fact that we were in the soup and likely to stay there for a considerable time. Also, tobacco was beginning to run short, and our stomachs had not yet adjusted themselves to a system of rationing, which, while quite good for a prison camp, was far from being what we had been accustomed to at home. We were hearty feeders who had suddenly been put on a diet, and our stomachs sat up on their hind legs and made quite a fuss about it.
Rations consisted of bread, near-coffee, jam or grease, and soup. Sometimes, instead of bread, we would get fifty small crackers apiece. When this happened, a group of men would usually club together, each contributing fifteen crackers, which would be mashed up and mixed with jam and taken to the cookhouse to be baked into a cake. It was always a problem whether it was worth sacrificing fifteen crackers to this end. The cake was always wonderful, but one's portion just slid down one's throat and was gone. Whereas one could chew a cracker.
People began to experiment with foods. One man found a bush in the corner of the yard with berries on it, and ate those - a sound move, as it turned out, for they happened by a fluke not to be poisonous. Another man used to save some of his soup at mid-day, add jam and eat the result cold in the evening. I myself got rather fond of wooden matches. You chew your match between the front teeth, then champ it up into a pulp and swallow. Shakespeare's Sonnets also make good eating, especially if you have a little cheese to go with them. And when the canteen started, we could generally get cheese.
Not much of it, of course. The way the canteen worked was that two men were allowed to go to the town with a guard and bring back as much as they could carry in a haversack apiece - the stuff being split eight hundred ways. It generally worked out at a piece of cheese about two inches long and two wide per man.
When the tobacco gave out, most of us smoked tea or straw. Tea-smokers were unpopular with the rest of their dormitory, owing to the smell caused by their activities - a sort of sweet, sickly smell which wraps itself round the atmosphere and clings for hours. Tea-smoking has also the disadvantage that it leads to a mild form of fits. It was quite usual to see men, puffing away, suddenly pitch over sideways and have to be revived with first aid.
Another drawback to Huy was that it appeared to have been expecting us even less than Liége had done. You may remember my telling you last week that our arrival seemed to come upon Liége as a complete surprise, and that there was nothing provided in the way of vessels to sip our soup out of. What Huy was short on was bedding.
An internee does not demand much in the way of bedding - give him a wisp or two of straw and he is satisfied - but at Huy it looked for a while as if there would not even be straw. However, they eventually dug us out enough to form a thin covering on the floors, but that was as far as they were able to go. Of blankets there were enough for twenty men. I was not one of the twenty. I don't know why it is, but I never am one of the twenty men who get anything. For the first three weeks, all I had over me at night was a raincoat, and one of these days I am hoping to meet Admiral Byrd and compare notes with him.
Well, now you see what I meant when I said just now that what seems important to an internee merely makes the general public yawn and switch off the radio. From the rockbound coast of Maine to the Everglades of Florida, I don't suppose there is a single soul who gives a hoot that, when I was at Huy, ice formed on my upper slopes and my little pink toes dropped off one by one with frost-bite. But, boy, wait till I meet my grandchildren!
However, as somebody once observed, it is always darkest before the dawn. And, as Methusaleh said to the reporter who was interviewing him for the local sheet and had asked what it felt like to live to nine hundred - `The first five hundred years are hard, but after that it's pie'. It was the same with us. The first seven weeks of our internment had been hard, but the pie was waiting just around the corner. There was, in short, a good time coming. On September the eighth, exactly five weeks from the day of our arrival, we were paraded and this time informed - not that Omer had received a parcel, but that we were to pack our belongings and proceed once more to an unknown destination.
This proved to be the village of Tost in Upper Silesia.
We made the journey this time, not in cattle trucks but in a train divided into small compartments, eight men to the compartment, and it took us three days and three nights, during which time we did not stir from our cosy little cubbyhole. On leaving Huy, we had been given half a loaf of bread apiece and half a sausage, and after we had been thirty-two hours on the train we got another half loaf and some soup. It was at night time that the trip became rather unpleasant. One had the choice between trying to sleep sitting upright, and leaning forward with one's elbows on one's knees, in which case one bumped one's head against that of the man opposite. I had never realized the full meaning of the expression `hardheaded Yorkshireman' till my frontal bone kept colliding with that of Charlie Webb, who was born and raised in that county.
As a result of this, and not being able to wash for three days, I was not at my most dapper when we arrived at Tost Lunatic Asylum, which had been converted into a camp for our reception. But in spite of looking like something the carrion crow had brought in, I was far from being downhearted. I could see at a glance that this was going to be a great improvement on our previous resting places.
One thing that tended to raise the spirits was the discovery that Scabies had been left behind. This was the affectionate name we had given to one of our fellow-internees at Huy. He was a public menace and had given me many an uneasy moment during the five weeks in which we had been in close contact. His trouble was that he had not only got lice but had contracted a particularly contagious form of skin disease, and in his lexicon there was no such word as `isolation'. He was a friendly, gregarious soul, who used to slink about like an alley cat, rubbing himself up against people. One time, I found him helping to peel the potatoes. Nice chap - it was a relief to find that he was no longer in our midst.
That was one thing that cheered me up on arrival at Tost. Another was that it looked as if at last we were going to have elbow-room. An Associated Press man, who came down to interview me later, wrote in his piece that Tost Lunatic Asylum was no Blandings Castle. Well, it wasn't, of course, but still it was roomy. If you had had a cat, and had wished to swing it, you could have done so quite easily in our new surroundings.
The Upper Silesian loony-bin consisted of three buildings - one an enormous edifice of red brick, capable of housing about thirteen hundred; the other two smaller, but still quite spacious. We lived and slept in the first-named, and took our meals in one of the others, where the hospital was also situated. The third building, known as the White House, stood at the bottom of the park, beyond the barbed wire, and for the first month or two was used only as a sort of clearing-station for new arrivals. Later, it was thrown open and became the center of Tost life and thought - being the place where our musicians practised and gave their concerts, where church services were held on Sundays, and where - after I had been given a padded cell to myself for working purposes - I eventually wrote a novel.
The park was a genuine park, full of trees, and somebody who measured it found that it was exactly three hundred yards in circumference. After five weeks at Huy, it looked like the Yellowstone. A high wall ran along one side of it, but on the other you got a fine view of some picturesque old barbed wire and a farm yard. There was a path running across its center which, when our sailors had provided a ball by taking a nut and winding string round it, we used in the summer as a cricket pitch.
The thing about Tost that particularly attracted me, that day of our arrival, was that it was evidently a going concern. Through the barbed wire, as we paraded in front of the White House, we could see human forms strolling about, and their presence meant that we had not got to start building our little nest from the bottom up, as had been the case at Liége and Huy. For the first time, we were in a real camp, and not a makeshift.
This was brought home to us still more clearly by the fact that the reception committee included several English-speaking interpreters. And when, after we had had our baggage examined and had been given a bath, a gentleman presented himself who said that he was the Camp Adjutant, we knew that this was the real thing.
Nor was there anything excessive in the way of discipline and formalities. We were expected to salute officers, when we met them - which we seldom did, and there was a camp order that ran `When internees are standing in groups, the first to see an officer must shout "Achtung"' - a pleasant variant on the old game of Beaver. `Whereat', the order continues, `all face officer at attention, with hands on seam of trousers' - the internees' trousers, of course - `and look at him, assuming an erect bearing'. The only catch about this was that it gave too much scope to our humorists. A man can have a lot of quiet fun by shouting `Achtung' and watching his friends reach for the seams of their trousers and assume an erect bearing, when there is not an officer within miles.
Life in an internment camp resembles life outside, in that it is what you make it. Nothing can take away the unpleasant feeling of being a prisoner, but you can make an effort and prevent it getting you down. And that is what we did, and what I imagine all the other British prisoners in Germany did. We at Tost were greatly helped by the fact that we had with us the sailors from the Orama, who would have cheered anyone up, and the internees from Holland.
Many of these were language teachers and musicians, and we had a great organiser in Professor Doyle-Davidson of Breda University. This meant that we were no longer restricted for intellectual entertainment to standing about in groups or playing that old Army game known alternatively as `House' or `Ousey Ousey'- where you pay ten Pfennigs for a paper with numbers on it and the banker draws numbers out of a hat, and the first man to fill up his paper scoops the pool.
One great improvement at Tost from my viewpoint, was that men of fifty and over were not liable for fatigues - in other words, the dirty work. At Liége and Huy, there had been no age limit. We had all pitched in together, reverend elders and beardless boys alike - cleaning out latrines with one hand and peeling potatoes with the other, so to speak. At Tost, the old dodderers like myself lived the life of Riley. For us, the arduous side of life was limited to making our beds, brushing the floor under and around them, and washing our linen. When there was man's work to be done, like hauling coal or shovelling snow, we just sat and looked on, swapping reminiscences of the Victorian Age, while the younger set snapped into it.
There were certain fatigues, like acting as a server at meals and working in the cookhouse, which were warmly competed for. For these, you got double rations. But the only reward of the ordinary chore, like hauling coal, was the joy of labor. I suppose a really altruistic young man after he had put in an hour or two hauling coal, would have been all pepped up by the thought that he had been promoting the happiness of the greatest number, but I never heard one of our toilers talk along these lines. It was more usual to hear them say, speaking with a good deal of feeling, that, next time their turn came along, they were ruddy well going to sprain an ankle and report sick.
It is a curious experience being completely shut off from the outer world, as one is in an internment camp. One lives principally on potatoes and rumors. One of my friends used to keep a notebook, in which he would jot down all the rumors that spread through the corridors, and they made amusing reading after the lapse of a few weeks. To military prisoners, I believe, camp rumors are known for some reason as `Blue Pigeons'. We used to call them bedtime stories, and most dormitories would keep a corridor hound, whose duty it was to go through the corridors before lights-out, collecting the latest hot news.
These bedtime stories never turned out to be true, but a rumor a day kept depression away, so they served their purpose. Certainly, whether owing to bedtime stories or simply to the feeling, which I myself had, that, if one was in, one was in and it was no use making heavy weather about it, the morale of the men at Tost was wonderful. I never met a more cheerful crowd, and I loved them like brothers.
With this talk, I bring to an end the story of my adventures as British Civilian Prisoner Number 796, and before concluding I should like once more to thank all the kind people in America who wrote me letters while I was in camp. Nobody who has not been in a prison camp can realize what letters, especially letters like those I received, mean to an internee.

industry_corpus2: Literature & Emotions


text:
If you're one who uses phone cameras heavily, you must know that phone photography is now no longer just about capturing the right light, angle or moment. It's also about giving the perfect finishing touches after a frame has been captured.
Thanks to the tens of Android apps floating around the Play Store, achieving some of the trendy photo effects have become so easy even when you don't have the necessary hardware on your phone. The best thing is that most of these require the least amount of effort.
Today, we're going to check out the best apps to pull off awesome photo-editing tricks on Android.
Portrait mode or Bokeh effect is one of the latest sensations in the camera world. The background softly blurring away while the object in the front still in sharp focus truly makes a photograph stand out.
Needless to say, this trend has been brought about by the number of new dual-camera phones. However, a dual-lens setup isn't the only thing standing between you and a beautiful picture.
The app that is going to help us get this effect is Fabby. A relatively new app, Fabby features in a number of our article ... it's really good.
It sports a slew of image-editing tools and one of its key strengths is the option to blur. All you need to do is select the picture from your phone gallery and apply the effect. Once done, all you have to do is save the picture and 'Bam!' Your new portrait is now ready to be shared (and liked).
Fabby gives you three different blur effects to choose from — min, medium, and max. Though the first two options give admirable bokeh effects, I felt that the max mode pushed it a bit too far.
Ever wanted to show a still object in motion? Yes, it's 2018 and it's possible to do so. Say 'Hi' to the Bluristic app. This app tracks objects in real-time and gives it a long exposure, which creates a background blur.
I don't even know how to ride a scooter!
To use this app, you'd have to tap the object of your focus and then slowly move your phone in either direction.
The result is a classic motion blur. Though Bluristic is super easy to use, it's not free and is priced at Rs 180 ($2.78).
Wires can truly take away the charm from pictures. Just the other day, I was trying to capture a few buildings in our locality, but alas, the crisscrossing wires distorted the whole frame.
Besides, it's not only wires that can distort a frame. Many times, you'll find a lot of unwanted things in your frame like shadows, road signs, etc. Our advice? Capture the shot and remove the objects later.
The app of the hour is PhotoDirector. It's an overall photo-editing package that contains a slew of editing tools.
To remove an unwanted object from the background, click on Removal and choose the brush type. Having done that, tap on the area where you'd want to touch up and hit Apply.
PhotoDirector will clone the area and effectively replace it with a similar background. Once done, all you have to do is click on Save and you'll end up with a beautiful blemish-free picture.
Almost all the phones, these days, come with beauty mode. The problem with these built-in filters is that they sometimes overdo the effects. Besides, these are limited to very few features.
The right app to help in giving a picture a true makeover is Toolwiz Photos. Its Pro Editing mode has tons of features such as face slimming, soft glow, and teeth whitening among others.
This app is especially helpful when it comes to giving touch-ups to head shots or close-ups.
When it comes to providing the overall finishing touch-ups to pictures, it's the built-in tools such as Smart HDR, Smart soft Focus or Enhance that come into play. As expected, these enhance the picture quality by letting you play with the settings.
It's true that a colored picture and a grayscale picture tells two different stories. But how about combining them? Meet Color Splash.
Color Splashing is basically highlighting the primary object with the splash of color while the rest of the picture is given a black-and-white look.
The app that rises to the occasion is PhotoDirector. Not only does it let you add a splash of color to a grayscale image, you can also choose to change the color of your original object.
All you have to do is choose the picture and tap on Splash. Pick the color that you want to highlight and slowly slide the slider towards the left until you achieve the desired look.
The splash value is generally low and hovers between 0 to 25. Once done, you can change the color by tapping on the Color Shift icon.
Imagine a background full of cats for your new and beautiful Facebook display pictures. Excited? Fabby again comes to the rescue with its horde of crazy features.
What's good about this app is that you can choose from the range of the built-in backgrounds or choose to upload a custom background. The app recognizes the object automatically and aptly replaces it with the background of your choice.
Have a wobbly video? Trust Google Photos to take care of it. Google Photos comes with a built-in stabilizing mechanism, which takes care of shaky videos to some extent.
All you have to do is open the video on Google Photos and tap the Edit icon at the bottom. This will give you two options — Stabilise and Rotate. Tapping on Stabilise will start the process.
Since it's a local process, it might take some time and, once done, you can have the video saved.
So, these were some of the nifty tricks for uplifting an image much after it has been clicked. The good thing about these apps is that they aren't just confined to a single image-editing tool.
Just pick up the right tool and it'd be no time before everybody else starts noticing your photography game. My favorite among these? Well, I'm a Toolwiz girl for now.


text: Spring is a time for fresh starts and new beginnings - why not begin the next stage of your Children’s Social Care management journey with us? Our Assistant Director, formerly our Head of Safeguarding, is looking for her successor who, it goes without saying, will be someone with extensive Children’s Safeguarding knowledge. Vastly experienced or simply incredibly talented – we want to hear from you!