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Oh God, here we go again.
There are stories told of magical potions that give you the strength for one massive fight, and kill you afterwards.I am beginning to think WWII was like that. The Greatest Generation knew enough about harshness and injustice and reality to discard the dirt and poverty of the past. They voted Churchill out and Attlee in, they voted for the new NHS, the welfare state, a social contract. They wanted a new world.
Many of their children, who grew into a level of ease unknown to British populations before them, found prosperity and comfort not quite exciting enough. They looked backwards to the War the War the War, to all being together, and sacrifice for the greater good, and knowing your place, though strangely your place was always a heroic one. The Greatest Generation weren't anywhere near so noddyheaded about what was happening to them. When the East End was bombed, the queen mother was booed for turning up in her furs and finery, possibly not the most tactful approach to those who had just lost their homes. The Mitchell library faces problems in finding male relatives from the time because so many young men faked their ages and names to join the army, in order to escape grinding poverty at home.
Forgotten under flags and bunting.
Instead, the country - or England at least - caved in to the grand fetishisation of the past, a war worshipping cult peopled by those whose greatest battles were against taxes, forever craving that splendid country of childhood, of being more important than everyone else without actually doing anything.
Gah, I am so sick of it! If there is such a thing as reincarnation, perhaps I had something to do with Germany... so many bizarre dreams of a German town and rubble and rain, something about water running uphill... Maybe I was Bomber Harris or someone equally as ghastly. Maybe I was some kind of propagandist. I could have been Churchill, I'm certainly in danger of attaining his waistline. Maybe hearing on repeat this awful endless moist-nosed wuffling that covers up all manner of lies is pure karmic punishment.
If so, it bloody works.
There are stories told of magical potions that give you the strength for one massive fight, and kill you afterwards.I am beginning to think WWII was like that. The Greatest Generation knew enough about harshness and injustice and reality to discard the dirt and poverty of the past. They voted Churchill out and Attlee in, they voted for the new NHS, the welfare state, a social contract. They wanted a new world.
Many of their children, who grew into a level of ease unknown to British populations before them, found prosperity and comfort not quite exciting enough. They looked backwards to the War the War the War, to all being together, and sacrifice for the greater good, and knowing your place, though strangely your place was always a heroic one. The Greatest Generation weren't anywhere near so noddyheaded about what was happening to them. When the East End was bombed, the queen mother was booed for turning up in her furs and finery, possibly not the most tactful approach to those who had just lost their homes. The Mitchell library faces problems in finding male relatives from the time because so many young men faked their ages and names to join the army, in order to escape grinding poverty at home.
Forgotten under flags and bunting.
Instead, the country - or England at least - caved in to the grand fetishisation of the past, a war worshipping cult peopled by those whose greatest battles were against taxes, forever craving that splendid country of childhood, of being more important than everyone else without actually doing anything.
Gah, I am so sick of it! If there is such a thing as reincarnation, perhaps I had something to do with Germany... so many bizarre dreams of a German town and rubble and rain, something about water running uphill... Maybe I was Bomber Harris or someone equally as ghastly. Maybe I was some kind of propagandist. I could have been Churchill, I'm certainly in danger of attaining his waistline. Maybe hearing on repeat this awful endless moist-nosed wuffling that covers up all manner of lies is pure karmic punishment.
If so, it bloody works.
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