The Independent reports that the inquests into the deaths of Princess Diana and Dodi El-Fayed are to take place next month. Michael Burgess, Coroner of the Queen’s Household and for Surrey, will be conducting separate inquests.

No point in rushing these things.

A coroner, in England and Wales, is a qualified lawyer or doctor who holds an inquiry into accidental or unusual deaths and used to be responsible for treasure trove too (see earlier entry). The coroner has a small jury, whose verdict will be something like ‘accidental death’. Matters may be passed on to the Crown Prosecution Service if they look suspicious, however. There is some interest in whether anything new will be revealed.

Handakte WebLAWg reports that an opinion is being obtained in the administrative court proceedings about the planned IKEA building in Koblenz. Another building in Bubenheim is apparently going ahead.

Meanwhile, here is the biggest IKEA in Germany being built in Fürth (photo taken on November 24th):

Protests in the area were on the lines of ‘Yes to IKEA, no to the monster building’. Real protest is being reserved for Möbel Höffner, which is also coming and has been wishing us a happy summer, giving us free bow-ties and so on, using the cartoon figure called ‘der Höffi’.

Meanwhile, if you drive up north through Erlangen and Forchheim, eventually three temples appear – not quite together (Bamberg lies between them), but the biggest buildings in the fairly empty landscape. Near Staffelstein, the pilgrimage church of Vierzehnheiligen and Kloster Banz face each other across the valley; before that, there is the other pilgrimage destination of Möbel Neubert at Hirschaid (they’ve been sending a lot of advertising lately – wonder why?)

I referred to the song The Twelve Days of Christmas in an earlier entry. Before that, I saw the term ‘candy striping’ in an entry by Gail at openbrackets. Candy striping seems to mean doing good deeds (but in North American English).

Both candy striping and the twelve days of Christmas are dealt with at www.snopes.com, the Urban Legends Reference Pages. Neither of those convey a hidden Christian message. (Candy canes are an American thing).

(Picture from here).

Of course, I was really interested in what the presents do mean. Apparently calling birds should be colly birds (coal-black?), meaning blackbirds, and even five gold rings refers to five ring-necked pheasants.

LATER NOTE: In a comment, Mark Liberman of language log points out that I am wrong about ‘candy stripe’. Candy stripe comes from the candy-striped pinafore dresses (called in America jumpers!) worn by hospital volunteers (apparently with a smile, see Wikipedia entry). It looks as if candystriping is a girly thing, although I found this, but alas without a photo:

bq. Mrs. Ray added that there is huge a waiting list for the popular volunteer programme, but more volunteers are always welcome. Candystriping is no longer a ‘girl thing’ and the programme now includes several young men. “We really want to encourage the boys,” said Mrs. Ray.

I mentioned the trial of Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr.

Huntley has now been convicted of murder after the jury deliberated for 17 hours.

In the course of the trial, it was stated that Huntley had been charged with rape but acquitted and that he had no criminal record. I noticed that because I knew he took his job as caretaker under an assumed name and I was expecting there would be a criminal record – something the jury is not allowed to know about. By saying you have no criminal record (Vorstrafen), you open up the subject of your antecedents (Vorleben) for examination.

It has now come out that there were a number of incidents:

bq. Humberside Police revealed they had dealt 10 times with Huntley, including four alleged rapes on teenagers, three allegations of having unlawful sex with girls under 16 and an allegation of indecent assault on a 12-year-old girl. No of the charges were proven. …

bq. An inquiry is under way to establish how a sexual predator with a history of targeting under-age girls managed to get a job as a school caretaker.

bq. The authorities involved have admitted that the system of checks failed, allowing a man who had come to the attention of Humberside Police on ten occasions to get the job.

It is interesting to see how much the jury did not hear. All this information will have been announced after conviction.

What do people do about comment spam, and comments in general?

I did once delete some comments that contained vulgarities. I do delete comments that are spam, normally linking to advertisement sites. Or the occasional empty comment (‘This is really interesting!’ plus a link to a translator’s website. I haven’t got round to adding a file with my opinions on comments and privacy.

Recently, a long poem in Spanish was put under my entry on the Golden Cone of Ezelsdorf-Buch. It came from a Hotmail address. I consulted some Spanish-speaking translators and they told me it was badly written and had wrong accents in it (‘Yeah: because it’s “A ti,” not “A tí,” and “grabada,” not “gravada,” and “Ese viento,” not “Ése viento,” and “es el único animal,” not “es único animal”; and because it’s lame), so I deleted it. Now it has appeared again (comments spam often does appear constantly on the same page, after being removed, time after time). I think I’ll leave it for the time being so as not to provoke multiple reposting. I recognize the word Yggdrasil in there, but I still have my doubts as to its relevance to the gold hats. Incidentally, Google revealed the poem also appeared at the Poetry Café, by Luis Tejeiro – Google throws up a couple more hits for that.

Last week it was still possible to move around the Christkindlesmarkt at midday and in the early afternoon. But at all events, the market with stalls from Nuremberg’s twin towns, in a separate small square, is less crowded and more interesting.

The cities are Glasgow, Gera, Kavala, Prague, Shenzhen, Atlanta, Charkiw, San Carlos, Limousin, Nice, Cracow, Antalya, Venice and Skopje (I hope I got all those right in English). Some have a restricted and some a broad range. The Polish stall has the most wonderful imaginative jewellery, some in amber but with lots of silver, all not cheap. The Russian stall has excellent objects in wood, including matrioshkas and St. Nicholases. The Glasgow stall sells these caps with hair attached (Germans know that all Irish and Scots have this carrot-red hair – they don’t believe it comes from the Vikings, they just think it’s Celtic).