There are quite a number of names already on my list for the free book draw. If you want to be included, don't wait until November to add your name. It is so easy for October to become November to become December without anything happening, and then, of course, it is too late.

On a slightly different note, the French film "Monsieur Lazhar" is definitely worth seeing. It takes up a number of very important and topical issues, and like a thin thread, woven through all these issues, is the situation of the refugee. Unlike the immigrant, who, for whatever reason, has chosen to move from one country to another, the refugee remains clinging to what might have been while attempting to come to terms with what is. For the refugee, life becomes infused - on so many levels - with the need to survive.

The connection between things:- ideas, concepts, images... can be hair-thin; it can also be like a six-lane motorway. No matter the breadth of the connection, it is, I feel, always present - everything is connected in some way for someone - and it is all these small connections that make life what it is. Whether the focus is on a present-day French Algerian fleeing atrocious acts of violence or on refugees from other parts of the world and even from other times, the connections remain. For people forced to seek refuge, survival becomes the only necessity - a necessity that no one can any longer take for granted.