Hold Onto Your Hats

Morning folks - well that was a strange one - sleep disturbed by awakening in room which was completely pitch and then getting a bee in my bonnet and going in hunt of the DVD of Alan Bleasedale's "Boys From The Black Stuff".

Pre-bed it was the full immensity of the Doomsday Clock set at 100 Seconds To Midnight and today awakening to what I once thought were noctilucent clouds, but are in fact just snow-heads; or could it be the drifting souls of all those lost in conflict over the years, demanding that this time something has to stop.

Coo that's a lot of ground covered, and it doesn't even factor in the fact that we're on the brink of something incredibly serious.

The Normality Of War
Dubrovnik, 2017

It is hard as a child born just 16 years after the end of World War II to imagine such a conflagration ever happening again. 

Does nobody watch "The World At War" any more?

It should be part of the World's National Curricula.

 

When I was young, London, even my bits of North London, was riddled with bomb-sites. 

The South Bank still bore scars of bombing. 

Even Neasden, Wembley and Harrow had weed and water-filled holes in the ground, surrounded by hoardings and so on.

My father's kit bag and ARP helmet were in the loft. 

My Ma's pressed steel first aid box, with instructions on how to deal with gas and burns was in daily use.

My generation grew up with war - it was at us the whole time. 

Not just the aftermath of WW II but Vietnam in particular and all the things you got your kids for Christmas and birthdays like Action Man and Johnny Sevens'.

I was fascinated by it with daily playing with Airfix soldiers and indeed anything else warlike I could get my hands on.

And on into adult life, the Falklands and so on.

And then you need to factor in all the other manly, call-to-arms crap, like Korea; Vietnam; Former Yugoslavia; Syria; Afghanistan etc etc . . . drone drone drone . . . Africa, Asia, Middle East, South America, Ireland - my life has been surrounded by it.

On holiday in Dubrovnik, post-conflagration, we saw the repairs to roofs, the scars and history, all worn on the city's sleeve like a badge of honour - and I mean no disrespect by that.

On a trip to Berlin a couple of years later, the walls around Museum Island are riddled with bullet scars.

There are memorials everywhere. Air-craft shelters. The infamous car park. 

Berlin too wears war on its sleeve.

Back in the UK with numerous anniversaries, people still get lumps in their throats talking about Grandad, or Uncle Tom and what they did during WW II.

We're still living with the aftermath of it..

It never ceases to amaze me that, like so many serfs and knights, people can be wheeled into conflict just like that. 

Does nobody think about anything, ever, at all? 

Oh, I need a job. 

Good here's some money, decent grub and sturdy clothing. 

We will become more than your family. 

Now go and kill someone over there.

There's a well-known expression:

"Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

So why, as a worldwide population, are we in thrall to a bunch of pseudo-silver backs.

All that posturing, grunting, beating of chests and showing what great gorillas they are. 

I'll name no names, but they're all there, from politics and tech, to every single aspect of life. 

Were it not so sad, you would consider it a great joke.

Why aren't they called out for the self-obsessed folk that they are?

It won't happen though. 

Power is meaningful and as such the problem with mankind is mankind.

There seems to be no common cause save greed and money/power - we mire ourselves in old enmity rather than see the bigger picture, which should be, live life, accept and help others, try to be as best a bunny you can be and above all else work towards a greater unified goal. 

It is 100% stupid that this goes by the way- think of the advances that would occur, were it to be decided that mankind needs to work towards a common cause for mankind. 

None of this chest beating. 

No great ape pretensions here.

We have to be beyond that.

Yet time and again we fall back into the same old ruts.

Not only is this depressing, but it is also worrying.

I would draw anyone interested in what could have happened (and bear in mind we're way beyond the measly little weapons shown in this) into the most terrifying and actually prescient piece of documentary I can think of, Peter Watkin's banned documentary "The War Game".

You can find it HERE

OK, it is slightly dated, but the info is still chillingly relevant.

Be very scared.

Holocaust Memorial Berlin
A Surprisingly Solemn Yet Joyous Place
Love and Life Must Triumph.

Holocaust Victims Statues
Jewish Cemetery, Berlin

I know it seems trite to say it, but as usual I had to mention the photography. 

The first photograph was taken in Dubrovnik on the Sony A6000 and 35mm, f2 Nikkor "O".

The others were taken in Berlin on a Canon EOS 50D with the pancake 40mm, f2.8 lens.

They're as war-like as I could muster.

They all show the consequence of conflict, but if this continues, we can sex it up and modernise as much as we like, but I can guarantee the faces of people will look just the same as the statues in picture 3. 

I think, to the young, raised to an extent in the shadow of the shadow of war, armed conflict is going to come as a real shock.

God help us all.

And that's it - brief again but why not - if it all goes shit-shaped this could be it!

Before I go, I couldn't say it any better than this:

They shoot without shame

In the name of a piece of dirt

For a change of accent

Or the colour of your shirt

Better the pride that resides

In a citizen of the world

Than the pride that divides

When a colorful rag is unfurled

Me? 

I am praying to the Aliens.

H xx