It being five o'clock on a Sunday afternoon, and only a few minutes after the obligatory walk after lunch, I've been musing about wine and its whole class/classification. The bottles are still on the table so I can tell you that today's lunch was, in vinous terms, worth remembering - a bottle of Clos Blanc de Vougeot, Domaine de la Vougeraie 1999 followed by a bottle of Hermitage (Cheron) 2004 - both in peak condition.
So the table was well set but what of the aperitif? Champagne, of course, (actually I had a rather obscure gin - Broker's - 47%) but in brand terms an inconsequential one: Antoine de Clevency - one of those not unusually on discount at Sainsbury's.
Actually AdeC is a perfectly acceptable Champagne, at least I think it is, but I in common with many other wine enthusiasts don't know. I do know that I shy away from Cava, Prosecco or the recently touted South African fizzes but I don't know whether this is pride or prejudice. And I don't know what a really great Champagne tastes like - vintage Krug to take a name out of the air - because I have never drunk one nor, indeed, been offered one.
Please understand, in no sense am I criticizing those who offer Champagne, either privately or corporately, for not handing out the good stuff, but I am beginning to wonder - and this is a British thought - whether the word 'Champagne' (if used accurately) is enough when pouring out a glass and that anything extra in terms either of commentary or quality, would be considered, at least in my bibulous circles, de trop.
Do the British, at least in my experience of 'us', cancel critical faculties when the 'C' word is uttered (despite the fact that per capita we are among the world's largest consumers)? Or, with certain extreme exceptions - occasioned either by poor manufacture or poor storage - can we not make a sensible judgement, one glass to another, when the wine offered is fizzy. OR - and this is my surmise - does no one serve the major (vintage) Champagne names even if one is serving great whites or reds? And if not, why not?
For a moment I thought this might be a reaction against branding - and arguably Champagne is the most branded wine until perhaps one reaches stellar price levels. Veuve Cliquot's orange label is as quickly recognizable in alcoholic circles as Coke's crimson script is among soft or soda drinkers. But this can't be true; Veuve C, Moet & C, Pol R, Taitt + Boll are all well known and, importantly in this context, frequently offered/imbibed.
Is it about the price of the boutique producers? Not really: a look through one of the lists of same finds a series of interesting growers from the wonderfully named towns of Ay, Dizy and Bouzy (to name but three) whose prices march with the more familiar names.
Is it about the price, full stop? Ah ha. Yes, sadly I think it is. Sad to say that while one can snob it up with a great Rhone or Burgundy (let alone a Claret), it's harder to do with a Champagne. And why? Because, at least in the British convention, Champagne is served first - the opening salvo in the war between sobriety and, well, stupor. And at that point in the proceedings (as at the very end), more or less any drink will do provide it sounds right and, as we say, 'hits the spot'.
Sunday 23 February 2014
Tuesday 16 July 2013
WHAT ARE MEMORIES MADE OF?
How much do we remember of childhood, how much is embroidered, how many memories are either false or inherited?
These questions often arise in my mind when reading memoires of early life particularly when the detail in such narratives is intense and when the author reaches back to so early a period of his or her youth where, equivalently, I would have little to say.
One vivid set of such early memories is contained in the first volume of Serge Aksakov's autobiography - 'Years of Childhood'. Aksakov (or Aksakoff) was born in Russia, in 1791 and his book is almost a quarter through - and filled with detail after detail - even before he remembers the events surrounding the death of Catherine the Great, Empress of all the Russias, in 1796.
Born eighty years later in France, Marcel Proust covers much of the same ground - the amiable or belligerent and always eccentric behaviour of his relatives and their servants, the changing landscape witnessed - in his case - through railway carriage windows, in Aksakov's through the windows of horse-drawn carriages or the frost-rimed windows of sleighs.
For me, perhaps, the most striking story is that written by Priscilla Napier of whom, like Aksakov (less so Proust), I know nothing bar that written by her own hand. Napier spent her childhood in Egypt before the First World War (she was born, apparently, in 1908) and her description in, 'A Later Beginner', of the lives of the ruling, or at least powerful, English elite in that part of the Middle East is extraordinary. The heat glows off the pages, the childish feuds and friendships exactly drawn, the dust, the sea, the Nile, the Arabs - and again the servants: cooks, nannies, housemaids, stable boys, (as well as early teachers), are near perfectly preserved.
But to repeat the opening question. How much of this is true? As we grow older, all of us preserve memories for some reason important to us but, as others pass, impossible to verify. And when verification is attempted some, perhaps many, of the 'facts' begin to be undermined.
Studies have been done on the elderly and their remembrances (to quote Proust) of 'times past'. In many cases the circumstances of the recollection (date or location) have been proved to be impossible. For me such analysis is interesting but I am not sure it is consequential. Does an error of detail reduce the value or indeed the credibility of a memory? Of course a formal historian would say that it does but I am not quite so sure.
I remember (!) my only visit to Jerusalem some 20 years ago. My first impressions of the organization of the monuments, in particular the Christian sites, turned quickly to annoyance as my Western mind revolted at the notion that everyone of consequence in the earlier part of the New Testament seemed to have lived in the Via Dolorosa - Joseph at one house, Mary at another and so on. Unlikely.
I was profoundly disconcerted by the Church of the Holy Sepulchre under the altar of which are, notionally, three holes where the crosses of Christ and the two robbers had originally stood - far too close together for likelihood and inside the city wall. In fact this location came to Constantine's mother the Empress Helena in a dream in the early part of the fourth century.
None of the details were accurate but this does not mean, I see now, that none of the stories is true. I make no comment about the divine but I am sure that much of the history related in the New Testament is right and the fact that events took place a few hundred yards from where they are commemorated rather than on the exact spot, seems irrelevant over the space of two thousand years. Memory has turned to symbolism.
And yet, and yet. The area of Jerusalem which moved me most was the Garden of Gethsemane in the same place it has always been and populated, in many cases, by the same olive trees - the very ones - that were alive when Christ walked the garden. The impact when memory - legend if you will - and fact come together is profound.
That profound impact is to be felt in the three books I've mentioned which leads me to think that their recollections are also true in fact and in detail, as well. It is just my memory that plays me up from time to time.
These questions often arise in my mind when reading memoires of early life particularly when the detail in such narratives is intense and when the author reaches back to so early a period of his or her youth where, equivalently, I would have little to say.
One vivid set of such early memories is contained in the first volume of Serge Aksakov's autobiography - 'Years of Childhood'. Aksakov (or Aksakoff) was born in Russia, in 1791 and his book is almost a quarter through - and filled with detail after detail - even before he remembers the events surrounding the death of Catherine the Great, Empress of all the Russias, in 1796.
Born eighty years later in France, Marcel Proust covers much of the same ground - the amiable or belligerent and always eccentric behaviour of his relatives and their servants, the changing landscape witnessed - in his case - through railway carriage windows, in Aksakov's through the windows of horse-drawn carriages or the frost-rimed windows of sleighs.
For me, perhaps, the most striking story is that written by Priscilla Napier of whom, like Aksakov (less so Proust), I know nothing bar that written by her own hand. Napier spent her childhood in Egypt before the First World War (she was born, apparently, in 1908) and her description in, 'A Later Beginner', of the lives of the ruling, or at least powerful, English elite in that part of the Middle East is extraordinary. The heat glows off the pages, the childish feuds and friendships exactly drawn, the dust, the sea, the Nile, the Arabs - and again the servants: cooks, nannies, housemaids, stable boys, (as well as early teachers), are near perfectly preserved.
But to repeat the opening question. How much of this is true? As we grow older, all of us preserve memories for some reason important to us but, as others pass, impossible to verify. And when verification is attempted some, perhaps many, of the 'facts' begin to be undermined.
Studies have been done on the elderly and their remembrances (to quote Proust) of 'times past'. In many cases the circumstances of the recollection (date or location) have been proved to be impossible. For me such analysis is interesting but I am not sure it is consequential. Does an error of detail reduce the value or indeed the credibility of a memory? Of course a formal historian would say that it does but I am not quite so sure.
I remember (!) my only visit to Jerusalem some 20 years ago. My first impressions of the organization of the monuments, in particular the Christian sites, turned quickly to annoyance as my Western mind revolted at the notion that everyone of consequence in the earlier part of the New Testament seemed to have lived in the Via Dolorosa - Joseph at one house, Mary at another and so on. Unlikely.
I was profoundly disconcerted by the Church of the Holy Sepulchre under the altar of which are, notionally, three holes where the crosses of Christ and the two robbers had originally stood - far too close together for likelihood and inside the city wall. In fact this location came to Constantine's mother the Empress Helena in a dream in the early part of the fourth century.
None of the details were accurate but this does not mean, I see now, that none of the stories is true. I make no comment about the divine but I am sure that much of the history related in the New Testament is right and the fact that events took place a few hundred yards from where they are commemorated rather than on the exact spot, seems irrelevant over the space of two thousand years. Memory has turned to symbolism.
And yet, and yet. The area of Jerusalem which moved me most was the Garden of Gethsemane in the same place it has always been and populated, in many cases, by the same olive trees - the very ones - that were alive when Christ walked the garden. The impact when memory - legend if you will - and fact come together is profound.
That profound impact is to be felt in the three books I've mentioned which leads me to think that their recollections are also true in fact and in detail, as well. It is just my memory that plays me up from time to time.
Monday 29 April 2013
DEGREES OF MONEY
I was musing this morning about the demands of the Norrington Table - the measure of the relative success of Oxford colleges calculated by the (First class) degrees achieved by their undergraduates and balanced by the number of students reading for degrees.
Just as in the football premiership, there seem to be three broad bands of colleges (excluding the small institutions usually focused on religious orders): the top ones always challenging for the top spot, the middle order which always do fairly well and seem not to need the tension of pushing higher and the bottom segment who have at least the consolation, unlike in football, that they cannot be relegated.
[My former college, Pembroke, is at the bottom and there is a move there to create a motto (in Latin) along the lines of: "At least we can row."]
My musings arose from a conversation last night with a young woman currently reading Biology at Christchurch, one of the grand colleges but one whose sense of its own importance has not, in recent years, been reflected by its position in the Norrington Table (currently seventh). The authorities at Christchurch have decided, in my view surprisingly, that financial inducement is the way forward and first year undergraduates (for example) are being offered discounts on next year's fees, better rooms and all sorts of other goodies if they achieve Firsts in their first set of (qualifying) exams.
This, so the young woman said, is leading to interesting conversations regarding plans for the Long Vacation along the lines of, "Well if I get a first then I'm planning to go to Thailand but if not, I suppose I'll spend the summer at home."
The implication of these monetary carrots is interesting. It suggests that the admissions tutors at Christchurch (and, by the way, I am not saying this college is unique in going down the financial route) are sure that the quality of students admitted to study there is as good as it can be and it is only the Oxford life, with its manifold diversions, that has shifted them from the strait and narrow path to academic glory - a shift that can be corrected by the application of a few pounds sterling.
Is this true? Is a grade B undergraduate likely to be turned into a grade A by the prospects of lucre or is it the case that those with the exceptional minds required to achieve an Oxford First class degree are already so driven and that no further investment, perhaps we might call it 'pressure', is either helpful or desirable?
For me, there's another consideration in play here which is the strenuous efforts being made by many colleges to encourage the application and admission of students from what we might euphemistically call 'poorer backgrounds'. I gather that some of these non-traditional undergraduates blossom in Oxford's highly demanding atmosphere but many do not. In either case, the goal of the admitting college here is to be a broader, all-embracing centre of learning and not, therefore, a hothouse forcing Firsts.
It is arguable, although in these liberal days the argument runs the risk of being labelled as socially divisive, that if financial inducements are brought into play, they should be aimed at this non-traditional group encouraging them to try for good Seconds. Ah but sadly, Second class degrees don't help when it comes to a college's ranking in the table which, despite its name, was not invented by Sir Arthur Norrington.
Just as in the football premiership, there seem to be three broad bands of colleges (excluding the small institutions usually focused on religious orders): the top ones always challenging for the top spot, the middle order which always do fairly well and seem not to need the tension of pushing higher and the bottom segment who have at least the consolation, unlike in football, that they cannot be relegated.
[My former college, Pembroke, is at the bottom and there is a move there to create a motto (in Latin) along the lines of: "At least we can row."]
My musings arose from a conversation last night with a young woman currently reading Biology at Christchurch, one of the grand colleges but one whose sense of its own importance has not, in recent years, been reflected by its position in the Norrington Table (currently seventh). The authorities at Christchurch have decided, in my view surprisingly, that financial inducement is the way forward and first year undergraduates (for example) are being offered discounts on next year's fees, better rooms and all sorts of other goodies if they achieve Firsts in their first set of (qualifying) exams.
This, so the young woman said, is leading to interesting conversations regarding plans for the Long Vacation along the lines of, "Well if I get a first then I'm planning to go to Thailand but if not, I suppose I'll spend the summer at home."
The implication of these monetary carrots is interesting. It suggests that the admissions tutors at Christchurch (and, by the way, I am not saying this college is unique in going down the financial route) are sure that the quality of students admitted to study there is as good as it can be and it is only the Oxford life, with its manifold diversions, that has shifted them from the strait and narrow path to academic glory - a shift that can be corrected by the application of a few pounds sterling.
Is this true? Is a grade B undergraduate likely to be turned into a grade A by the prospects of lucre or is it the case that those with the exceptional minds required to achieve an Oxford First class degree are already so driven and that no further investment, perhaps we might call it 'pressure', is either helpful or desirable?
For me, there's another consideration in play here which is the strenuous efforts being made by many colleges to encourage the application and admission of students from what we might euphemistically call 'poorer backgrounds'. I gather that some of these non-traditional undergraduates blossom in Oxford's highly demanding atmosphere but many do not. In either case, the goal of the admitting college here is to be a broader, all-embracing centre of learning and not, therefore, a hothouse forcing Firsts.
It is arguable, although in these liberal days the argument runs the risk of being labelled as socially divisive, that if financial inducements are brought into play, they should be aimed at this non-traditional group encouraging them to try for good Seconds. Ah but sadly, Second class degrees don't help when it comes to a college's ranking in the table which, despite its name, was not invented by Sir Arthur Norrington.
Sunday 14 April 2013
MAD, BAD BUT NEW?
I've just read a book review in the Sunday Times, specifically of a book called 'Dear Lupin: Letters to a Wayward Son." At one point the reviewer says the author (Roger Mortimer), "had excellent material to work with. The delightful Mortimer family all seem to have been as mad as balloons."
"As mad as balloons." Has anyone else ever heard or used this expression before? Of course we all know, "As mad as a March hare" and equally, but less usually, "As mad as a cut snake" (for some reason often used to describe, not necessarily unkindly, an Irishman or woman). But, "As mad as balloons?"
What sort of balloons, I wonder? Are we talking of those massed bunches of fairground balloons, made of foil, filled with helium and shaped as fish, dogs or characters from Disney or manga? Or are we talking about the common or garden balloon-shaped balloons, the staple of birthday parties long gone - filled with gasping breaths (resorted to inevitably when the balloon pump, always bought new for the special occasion, turned out in current political phraseology to be 'unfit for purpose')?
Certainly these old-fashioned inflatables could engender a sort of madness (and I am not talking about the budgerigar voice resulting from inhaling helium). I remember long ago a birthday party (mine) in my rooms at Oxford when I and other strong-lunged rowers, blew up a gross or two balloons in the hope that, under cover of the shifting, squeaking latex we could get our hands, albeit briefly, on the shifting, squeaking girls invited to enliven the occasion.
Actually, the plan worked well but not for long. As often happens at such student events, the booze ran freely and ran out quickly, requiring me - both as host and pretty much the only man in funds at the time - to pop out for more supplies.
The word 'pop' was apposite. As I returned, the noise through the windows of balloon after balloon being intentionally burst brought to mind descriptions of the guns of the First World War when heard from Kent if the wind was in the east. Suffice it to say that the guests were having a 'blast', one long-remembered but I have to say that, for a moment at least, I failed to see the funny side.
I was, in James Hawes's newly-minted phrase in 'A White Merc with Fins', MAF (As 'Mad as Fuck').
"As mad as balloons." Has anyone else ever heard or used this expression before? Of course we all know, "As mad as a March hare" and equally, but less usually, "As mad as a cut snake" (for some reason often used to describe, not necessarily unkindly, an Irishman or woman). But, "As mad as balloons?"
What sort of balloons, I wonder? Are we talking of those massed bunches of fairground balloons, made of foil, filled with helium and shaped as fish, dogs or characters from Disney or manga? Or are we talking about the common or garden balloon-shaped balloons, the staple of birthday parties long gone - filled with gasping breaths (resorted to inevitably when the balloon pump, always bought new for the special occasion, turned out in current political phraseology to be 'unfit for purpose')?
Certainly these old-fashioned inflatables could engender a sort of madness (and I am not talking about the budgerigar voice resulting from inhaling helium). I remember long ago a birthday party (mine) in my rooms at Oxford when I and other strong-lunged rowers, blew up a gross or two balloons in the hope that, under cover of the shifting, squeaking latex we could get our hands, albeit briefly, on the shifting, squeaking girls invited to enliven the occasion.
Actually, the plan worked well but not for long. As often happens at such student events, the booze ran freely and ran out quickly, requiring me - both as host and pretty much the only man in funds at the time - to pop out for more supplies.
The word 'pop' was apposite. As I returned, the noise through the windows of balloon after balloon being intentionally burst brought to mind descriptions of the guns of the First World War when heard from Kent if the wind was in the east. Suffice it to say that the guests were having a 'blast', one long-remembered but I have to say that, for a moment at least, I failed to see the funny side.
I was, in James Hawes's newly-minted phrase in 'A White Merc with Fins', MAF (As 'Mad as Fuck').
Thursday 10 January 2013
FOOD WASTAGE
Today there was a report out, perhaps unexpectedly, from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, talking about the amount of food wasted around the world. Their horrific, key statistic is that as much as 50% of the food grown remains unconsumed and therefore, the report says, that it's not that the world needs more farmers and farmland to feed the hungry, so much as more efficient storage and usage and less picky consumers.
One element of food wastage, the report adds - and this applies really only to the developed west - is that 'Use by' dates are too tight causing supermarkets (for example) to throw away vast quantities of perfectly edible produce. The obvious suggestion, therefore, is that such dates should be lengthened. But I wonder whether there's counter-intuitive path?
At the moment, I understand that charitable food banks and their equivalents, depend to a considerable degree on this out-of-date food to feed their 'customers'. The process is not efficient, the food banks are no way as full as they could or, in a caring society, should be. I assume, with some justification I trust, that part of the problem here is speed of distribution and also a perfectly reasonable concern about feeding the poor with potentially bad food. Some shades of the adulterated flour that was one of the staples of the British Victorian poor, leading to many cases of rickets.
So how about this? What about shortening the sell-by dates, say by a day or two? This would mean that we would be certainly that discarded food would be perfectly edible - certainly so - and could be used for any charitable purpose without fear that one was penalizing the poorest. My suggestion is in some ways akin to a charitable tithe where, for example, the price of an item is supplemented by a few pence (or pounds on something expensive) with the excess earmarked for charitable causes.
I agree that such a move would cost retailers money, a hard ask in these straitened times, but somehow I doubt that it would cost as much, anything like as much, as a simple calculation of the percentage reduction of sell-time would suggest.
Cameron's 'Big Society' concept, despite some strong values, seems to have fallen from conversation these days, except when used by critics in a snide way. Such a move as the one I suggest, might help with its renaissance and thus gain real support from the powers that be.
One element of food wastage, the report adds - and this applies really only to the developed west - is that 'Use by' dates are too tight causing supermarkets (for example) to throw away vast quantities of perfectly edible produce. The obvious suggestion, therefore, is that such dates should be lengthened. But I wonder whether there's counter-intuitive path?
At the moment, I understand that charitable food banks and their equivalents, depend to a considerable degree on this out-of-date food to feed their 'customers'. The process is not efficient, the food banks are no way as full as they could or, in a caring society, should be. I assume, with some justification I trust, that part of the problem here is speed of distribution and also a perfectly reasonable concern about feeding the poor with potentially bad food. Some shades of the adulterated flour that was one of the staples of the British Victorian poor, leading to many cases of rickets.
So how about this? What about shortening the sell-by dates, say by a day or two? This would mean that we would be certainly that discarded food would be perfectly edible - certainly so - and could be used for any charitable purpose without fear that one was penalizing the poorest. My suggestion is in some ways akin to a charitable tithe where, for example, the price of an item is supplemented by a few pence (or pounds on something expensive) with the excess earmarked for charitable causes.
I agree that such a move would cost retailers money, a hard ask in these straitened times, but somehow I doubt that it would cost as much, anything like as much, as a simple calculation of the percentage reduction of sell-time would suggest.
Cameron's 'Big Society' concept, despite some strong values, seems to have fallen from conversation these days, except when used by critics in a snide way. Such a move as the one I suggest, might help with its renaissance and thus gain real support from the powers that be.
Thursday 11 October 2012
MEMORIES OF WAR
The radio today was talking about possible plans to commemorate the outbreak of WW1, 100 years on. Flags flying at half-mast, shops closed. A nation remembers.
I wonder how this will be achieved in practise?
There's a dislocation in this country as in many multinational communities between the ruling or government classes who maintain a sort of collective memory of major events and the mass who know little, remember less and probably think all such ceremonial - if that's what it's to be - is nothing to do with them.
And perhaps I do agree with accusations of militarism glorified even though we'll be attempting to remember the dead.
A few years ago, I visited Cambrai, the scene of the first major tank offensive of WW1 and there met a Frenchman who had found, after many years of research (and digging)a Mark V (?) tank - Matilda, I believe it was called. Having discovered it, he had then spent a lot of time looking for descendants of the crew of whom, at the time when the tank got hit by a shell, three survived (I think from a total of eight). I believed he'd found relatives for six of the eight but, as luck would have it, as we were talking he took a call on his mobile from Florida where, someone had unearthed (inappropriate word, I know) a cousin of the seventh crew member.
Philip Korzynski (the Frenchman) was exceptionally pleased and in his enthusiasm said something that resonated with me then and now which was that the dead were easy to find but the living kept moving around and therefore became harder to trace. ... The dead are easy to find.
And that's the thing about WW1. Who commemorated or commemorates the survivors? True they all got campaign medals but their names are not inscribed, with those of their comrades in arms, on the great or small monuments that dot northern France, Gallipoli, Belgium and many other locations. How did the survivors feel about surviving?
I have read accounts of many soldiers never truly recovering from survival - guilt that they hadn't many the ultimate sacrifice that so many others had. And I am not talking here about the wounded but of those who through some statistical chance, made it through with few external marks.
There are, in England a clutch of so-called 'fortunate villages', places noted for the fact they have no war memorials because none from that locale died in either the First or Second World Wars. How do those inhabitants feel on Remembrance Day, I wonder? How did they feel, say, in 1930?
I have often mused, and may well have reported these musings before in this blog, about how it must be to be a child growing up in one of the major areas of conflict - Ypres, for example. Ypres despite the fact that Pope John Paul II designated it a 'City of Peace', is entirely a city of war and death. You can't move around without coming across a memorial, a graveyard (and to my recollection there are some 600 cemeteries that surround the city) or indeed a shop selling memorabilia, 'trench art' and so on. Equally you can't move without meeting soldiers of all nationalities come to pay homage at the Menin Gate. And that ceremony, since the late 20s, and with an obvious gap for the second war, has been going on, daily, these past 80 plus years.
"At the setting of the sun and the rising of the moon, we will remember them".
I have been to the Menin Gate Last Post event on three or four occasions, and there's always a crowd, several hundred in fact. Even on Christmas Day? I wonder - perhaps there are more then.
But, to return to the point, how must it feel to be brought up in such circumstances where one has to be reverential at all turns to avoid offending someone? No sneaky fags behind an arch, no first kisses or quick fumbles in the park. There are no parks, really. All the green sward is occupied by headstones.
I wonder how this will be achieved in practise?
There's a dislocation in this country as in many multinational communities between the ruling or government classes who maintain a sort of collective memory of major events and the mass who know little, remember less and probably think all such ceremonial - if that's what it's to be - is nothing to do with them.
And perhaps I do agree with accusations of militarism glorified even though we'll be attempting to remember the dead.
A few years ago, I visited Cambrai, the scene of the first major tank offensive of WW1 and there met a Frenchman who had found, after many years of research (and digging)a Mark V (?) tank - Matilda, I believe it was called. Having discovered it, he had then spent a lot of time looking for descendants of the crew of whom, at the time when the tank got hit by a shell, three survived (I think from a total of eight). I believed he'd found relatives for six of the eight but, as luck would have it, as we were talking he took a call on his mobile from Florida where, someone had unearthed (inappropriate word, I know) a cousin of the seventh crew member.
Philip Korzynski (the Frenchman) was exceptionally pleased and in his enthusiasm said something that resonated with me then and now which was that the dead were easy to find but the living kept moving around and therefore became harder to trace. ... The dead are easy to find.
And that's the thing about WW1. Who commemorated or commemorates the survivors? True they all got campaign medals but their names are not inscribed, with those of their comrades in arms, on the great or small monuments that dot northern France, Gallipoli, Belgium and many other locations. How did the survivors feel about surviving?
I have read accounts of many soldiers never truly recovering from survival - guilt that they hadn't many the ultimate sacrifice that so many others had. And I am not talking here about the wounded but of those who through some statistical chance, made it through with few external marks.
There are, in England a clutch of so-called 'fortunate villages', places noted for the fact they have no war memorials because none from that locale died in either the First or Second World Wars. How do those inhabitants feel on Remembrance Day, I wonder? How did they feel, say, in 1930?
I have often mused, and may well have reported these musings before in this blog, about how it must be to be a child growing up in one of the major areas of conflict - Ypres, for example. Ypres despite the fact that Pope John Paul II designated it a 'City of Peace', is entirely a city of war and death. You can't move around without coming across a memorial, a graveyard (and to my recollection there are some 600 cemeteries that surround the city) or indeed a shop selling memorabilia, 'trench art' and so on. Equally you can't move without meeting soldiers of all nationalities come to pay homage at the Menin Gate. And that ceremony, since the late 20s, and with an obvious gap for the second war, has been going on, daily, these past 80 plus years.
"At the setting of the sun and the rising of the moon, we will remember them".
I have been to the Menin Gate Last Post event on three or four occasions, and there's always a crowd, several hundred in fact. Even on Christmas Day? I wonder - perhaps there are more then.
But, to return to the point, how must it feel to be brought up in such circumstances where one has to be reverential at all turns to avoid offending someone? No sneaky fags behind an arch, no first kisses or quick fumbles in the park. There are no parks, really. All the green sward is occupied by headstones.
Tuesday 5 June 2012
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