English Speaking Club Aarbergen

Facsimile edition of 1489 edition of Fabulas de Esopo published in Madrid in 1929. Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9445992 Aesop's Fables, or the Aesopica, (German: Äsops Fabeln) is a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and storyteller who lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 564 BCE.  Of varied and unclear origins, the stories associated with his name have descended to modern times through a number of sources and continue to be reinterpreted in different verbal registers and in popular as well as artistic media. You can read all the stories online here or listen to them here  for free. Source:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesop's_Fables.

Time Out Magazine produced a list of the most famous paintings .  While I would generally agree with them, in my opinion, one painting that is missing is The Scream by Edvard Munch (pictured above). Although not everyone's cup of tea , the painting is certainly well known by those with no particular interest in art. I would have also included one of the works by Andy Worhul and Banksi but I wonder of these two artists works would age very well. By this I mean, would they be as cherised in a century as they are now? While I'm on that topic, here are lyrics to Don McLeans song Vincent . Can you guess which painter it is about and which paintings of his is being refered to in this song? Image: By Edvard Munch - National Gallery of Norway 8 January 2019 (upload date) by Coldcreation, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=69541493

Here's the link to the playlist . You do not have to be subscribed to Spotify to listen (although without a subscription, you will have to listed to some adverts before the song plays).

I am a fan of classic crime novels, specifically (but not exclusively) authors from Britain. So here is my list of favourite books and authors in no particular order. The Murders in the Rue Morgue - Edgar Allan Poe Set in Paris during the early 19th century, Mr. Dupin gets called upon by the prevent of the Parisian Police to help solve the mysterious murder of Madame L'Espanaye and her daughter. The former victim was found in a yard behind the house, with multiple broken bones and her throat so deeply cut that her head fell off when the body was moved. The daughter was found strangled to death and stuffed upside down into a chimney, wedged so tightly that it took the strength of several men to pull her loose. The murders occurred in a fourth-floor apartment that was locked from the inside; on the floor were found a bloody straight razor, bloody tufts of grey hair, and two bags of gold coins. Their banker is taken into custody but there is nothing to link him to the crime. Bleak Hou...

Clout was an all-female South African rock group formed in Johannesburg in 1977, best known for their hit single, Substitute which was actually a new arrangement of a Righteous Brothers song .  Clout's version reached number one in South Africa and several European countries. It also reached number two on the UK Singles Chart and remained in the UK charts for fifteen weeks. Due to sanctions against South African artists and performers by the UK's Equity at the time, the BBC One television series Top of the Pops used the group's performance of the song on Dutch programme TopPop , from 8 April 1978, to present the hit song for its top ten countdown. Clout were very sucessful in Europe and a few of their singles made the top ten. However, like many other musicians, their sucess was not replicated in the US, where Substitute only reached 67 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100. They split up in 1981, shortly after the release of their last major single, a re-arrangement of the Hal...