You can take to multiculture even if they don't drink

We spent Friday night and Saturday in Swansea having a lovely time with A&K and their boys, enjoying some fine conversation, some Southern Comfort, some less coherent conversation, some walking on a beautiful deserted beach by way of hangover cure, and some just being part of family life for a while.

We arrived back in Oxford at about seven on Saturday night, and as we got off the bus on Cowley Road I said 'oh god, they've put Christmas lights up. Save us from Christmas lights in bloody November'.

But as I got closer to them, I realised they weren't Christmas lights. They actually say 'Happy Eid'.

How many streets in Britain have Happy Eid lights?

What's Eid? said M. And to be honest I wasn't quite sure. I knew it was an important festival in India, and I guessed it was a Muslim one because the Hindus have only just had Diwali... and I thought maybe it was to do with it being Ramadan... but that was as far as I could go.

So when we got home I looked it up by using the define: feature of Google, which I have only recently discovered.

(Aside: I mostly get frustrated with Google when it doesn't immediately deliver sites *about* things, instead choosing sites selling them. About.com is a way of getting round this but I don't usually think to go there first. But anyway -- define: is a very useful feature, if a little immature as yet)

Eid mostly seems to mean 'Electronic ID' but let's ignore that for the moment and leap to the very useful definition in About.com's Ramadan Glossary

Eid is the holiday at the end of Ramadan. Which is pretty much exactly what I guessed it was. Cool.

I am warmed at the thought that the Eid lights will mean lots of people find out what Eid is. Unless I am exceptional in a) not knowing or b) wanting to find out because it's up in lights. Both of which I doubt.

And of course, being a Blackpool girl, I think the more lights the better. Come on you Buddhists!

joella