War

I was born twenty four years after the Second World War ended.  My parents, who were in their early 40's when I was born, had been teenagers for the duration of the war, and their memories of it were still fresh.  My mother spoke of air raids, and of narrowly escaping death during a music lesson.  The children were singing so loudly that they did not hear the warning, and a bomb hit their school playing field, narrowly missing them.  She and her younger brother were almost evacuated to Canada, and got as far as the train station platform with their mother, before she changed her mind in time and they all returned home.  As a little girl, I visited the house where she grew up, which then belonged to my Uncle, and remember the Anderson shelter in their back garden.

 It seems such a long time ago, but it really wasn't.  Twenty four years ago was 1994, the year I started my teacher training at Manchester Metropolitan University.  It was the year I moved to Leek in Staffordshire and lived in a tiny little two up two down in Britannia Street, with a brown bathroom suite and a communal back garden where our neighbours kept ferrets that made the whole garden smell of wee.  It was the year I got my first computer and developed an addiction for the game minesweeper.  If you google it, there is an online version.  I looked.  I couldn't remember the name of the game and when I found it, nearly got sucked in by it again. My blog was almost a goner!

 Twenty four years is nothing.  I have clothes and curtains and nail varnish older than that.  And yet it seemed like ancient history to a younger me.  I grew up with parents whose memories of adolescence were set against a backdrop of war.  I remember when I was about 14, my Mum said that she was so glad she wasn't a teenager now (in 1983), with the glue sniffing and drugs and violence.  I said how much more frightening it must have been for her, growing up during the war.  But she said it wasn't at all, it was exciting.  That seemed amazing to me, with my only experiences of war coming from watching solemn remembrance ceremonies on TV, or Dad's Army.  It all seemed so miserable, and probably black and white.    I think I failed to realise that the old people who talked about the war had been young at the time.  That those soldiers on the battlefields were the age my own children are now.  Only now, do I begin to appreciate the horrors and the sacrifices.  But I can't even begin to imagine.

I still avoid the TV and radio every Sunday morning at this time of year, although now it is because it makes me so sad.  It makes me think of my Dad, and Mr C, both old soldiers, one who served in Egypt and Palestine, the other a Cold War soldier, with different experiences but nonetheless, both willing to do their duty.  And of my grandparents and their families, but also of families who are still having to live in war zones today.  And of the soldiers who died, those who lived, and those who still serve.  Such bravery.  It breaks my heart.

L told me that on Friday,  the PE teacher at her school had brought the lesson to an early close, reminding the girls that they needed to go to the armitage celebrations.  That's PE teachers for you!