Feeling a little out of sorts because of work issues that I won't go into here. But the weekend is coming up, and there are things to do for Scottish dancing! For example, the sets of tunes for the Frankfurt ball need to be completed.

I had my regular after-class debriefing chat with Yulia as a follow-up to Tuesday (on the new Jitsi Meet server, no less), and we both agree that it is time to make the official video for the RSCDS in order to wrap up her RSCDS CTI programme participation. That will happen in March, although we said we'd treat that session as a “dress rehearsal” for an official one after Easter. That way if the video turns out OK we can submit it, but if problems of any kind occur we can have another go with nobody thinking that this is a huge thing.

Earlier today another idiot from Afghanistan injured a number of people (some of them seriously) in Munich by intentionally driving his car into a crowd. Of course this close to the federal parliamentary elections (on Sunday week), this means that the usual people are, once more, loudly arguing that the borders should be closed and all “illegals” should be deported. Which sounds great in theory but would probably have done little to prevent today's event, since, as it turns out, the presumed perpetrator was living in the country quite legally, had a job, no criminal record, and presumably the wherewithal to afford the car he used for his attack (which was apparently his own). In principle it would be nice if anyone who is not granted political asylum here could rapidly be sent back to where they came from, but what I tend to wonder is whether those countries are at all eager to have those people back, and whether it isn't in their interest to make this process as arduous, inconvenient, and drawn-out as possible. In the case of Afghanistan, the German government and the Taliban in charge there don't officially talk to each other, so arranging to deport even convicted criminals there is difficult and involves other countries as interlocutors. After all, we can't very well fly those people to the Tajikistan side of the Tajikistan-Afghanistan border and give them a strong shove in a general south-western direction (for one, the Tajiks would probably not be enthusiastic – but that sort of thing has actually been proposed). This is a problem for the new government to solve, whoever it will be.

With all these unsavoury goings-on it is just as well to enjoy some light entertainment, and in our case that's currently the Channel 5 remake of All Creatures Great and Small, James Herriot's popular veterinary epic from Yorkshire. This was re-run in bulk on Channel 5 before Christmas, and we're now slowly working through the recordings (five seasons, and we're in the middle of the fourth). Unlike many other remakes of beloved shows, this one is actually better than the BBC original from the 1970s, and highly recommended.