Even TV can be surprising, sometimes

It's a good thing when one can still be surprised; in this case, I was surprised by television. I had the usual '30 channels and nothing on'-feeling last night and was about to do the unthinkable and actually watch the Doctor Who-episode "The Gunfighters" all the way through, when I gave TV one last chance and hit upon arte. Merci, arte.

They had a documentary on last night about Marc-Antoine Charpentier, a composer I had heard of but never really noticed. Having tuned in in the middle of a piece of music, I was intrigued and stayed on that channel, listening and busying myself with the knitwork. More and more, I was drawn into the music, and enjoyed it, already planning on hitting my favourite music shop on Monday and looking for CDs. The documentary moved from the opera Médée to church music, specifically, the Te Deum in D-Major. I know someone who reads this who will probably grin now. Yes, it is the very well-known signature tune for the European Broadcasting Union. I had never thought about the fact that someone must have composed it, and that it may be older than the EBU.

Surprise, surprise.

Oh yes; before I saw the program on Charpentier, I watched a report on the channel Phoenix on a new trend among farmers: they start to farm snails, or rather, escargots. The title? "Schleimspur zum Erfolg"; slime trail to success.