Holidays

Returning to normality

One of the things about holidays is that as soon as you come back, everything slips back to normal and it is as if the trip never happened. The memories are there as are the gaping holes in the bank account, and I fear that I may be getting another reminder in the form of a speeding ticket, but I will hold my breath on that one. Dammit I didn’t see the camera or the change in speed limit because of a bloody camper van, but I won’t start on about those.

Since returning, I haven’t been out of the house other than to potter in the garden, and for that I am quite happy. Having said that I have still managed to continue the spendfest, ordering books and movies about the first and second world wars. The 3sheer vastness of those undertakings made a big impression on me and I fully intend to find out more about what went on.

I have been in touch with an old school friend; someone that I haven’t seen in 40 years, and that has been a revelation. She sent me a photograph of a school trip that we must have taken in the sixth form, and although I recognise all of the people in the shot, I have no recollection of the event whatsoever. That is disturbing as I have such crystal clear memories of days at school. Now I doubt the validity of those memories and am beginning to think that some may be artificial, mere figments of my imagination. We do tend to remember what we choose to remember and conveniently forget events that are not pleasant or that are in some way negative. I hope that I don’t see the past through “rose coloured glasses” but my communications with Kate have made me think, and reassess my thoughts. I hope that she will be able to fill in some blanks and lend a little accuracy to my accounts. Time, I guess, will tell.

Chips with everything

Now I know that the title is a cliché but I considered it apposite. It is in fact the title of a play by Arnold Wesker, not, as my copy of Enclopaedia Brittanica would have it, a part of the Wesker Trilogy, but a powerful freestanding play about some new recruits into the army. It is a play that I read when at school and it captured my imagination at the time. I was reminded of it last week as we journeyed through Normandy and Belgium, visiting the scenes of many of the battles of the two world wars. The scale of the carnage that took place in those two terrible periods of history is mind boggling. The graveyards and monuments are everywhere and still corpses are discovered in the fields nearly 100 years on. To say that I felt humbled and saddened is an understatement, and yet I was also impressed that these places are still being visited by swarms of people, all of whom show the greatest respect for these, mainly young, men who were butchered in their hundreds of thousands, and for what?

Most of us have relatives who fought in these conflicts. Some, the lucky few managed to return and those that did were forever changed by the experiences that they went through. My relatives managed to survive, but they never wanted to talk about what happened at Ypres or Passchendale. There are plenty of images and movie footage to explain why.

We stayed in a number of hotels, and ate in a number of restaurants, being fond of French and Belgian food. This time i noticed two differences in the cuisine compared with previous visits to this part of the world. One is that the whole experience has become more expensive and it seems that unless you are very lucky or wealthy, everything comes with chips! Mussels and chips, ok that is a fair combination but whatever happened to the traditional vegetables perfectly cooked and served? I guess that sadly the French are drifting into the 21st century.

Priorities

Dale and Leilani Neumann, have just been convicted or reckless homicide, because they put their religion before medicine, when their 11 year old daughter became ill. Choosing prayer rather than medical intervention, led to the unnecessary death of a young innocent girl and now both parents face a 25 year jail sentence. This is such a sad story and yet there is nothing unusual about it. The same things happen over an over again with so many people believing that prayer actually works.

One can almost imagine that in Bible belt USA, that these two would have got off, but no, a jury was found even there, that established their guilt. There are those that believe that Dale and Leilani must be mentally ill and should be hospitalised rather than incarcerated, but there is a dangerous precedent. If these two are found to be mentally ill, then the same diagnosis could be applied to 70% of the world's population on the grounds that they talk to invisible friends on a regular basis, and that many people have spent their lives in institutions for far less.

Those who think that religion is wonderful, or even a benign part of our lives, might like to think again. It is all very well to say that such extremists are rare but they are not, and what is more the evidence suggests that it is the extremists who tend to dominate in the end. The real criminals here are not the parents who I am sure loved their child, but those misguided and ignorant individuals who brainwashed them into believing that to love a fantasy is more important than to love one's children.