Inspirational!

I thought you might like to share the five most inspirational moments of my week - things that I find still resonating in my head even now. That's what you call shelf-life!

Number one. If you read my October post, Shoe Boxes v Handbags then you will really, really enjoy this clip! It made me smile, then laugh and finally cry.
(If you don't know anything about 'Shoe Boxes' then check out my post!)

The Journey of a Shoebox in 3 Minutes!

www.youtube.com

http://www.operationchristmaschild.org.uk/ Want to know the incredible journey of a shoebox? Keep watching!


Second on my list is something I heard on BBC Radio 4 last week. It was just great - spare yourself half an hour and have a listen. Brave girls.


The War Brides Return

Third up, I'd like to give you a tantalising glimpse (alas, not in the flesh, and alas only a glimpse - you really need several light years) of probably the most amazing art collection in the world. The art is breathtaking, but the way it's displayed is the icing on the cake. In my ignorance, I knew nothing of the Barnes Foundation until this week. There is only one word: WOW. (Even if you don't want to watch the whole programme, it's worth - oh so worth - seeing the art...)

The Barnes Foundation - Billion Dollar Art Heist

If you can't get the TV programme where you live, at least have a look at The Barnes Foundation

It will take you to another place.

My fourth treat is a small piece of writing - small referring to its length! It's only a paragraph.

It's beautifully crafted and very satisfying.  When We Write by Robin Hawke

It is part of the 100 Word Challenge for Grown Ups

Last but by no means least is another BBC Radio 4 programme.  I listened to this while I was making cupcakes for the market. Andrew Motion's 'Laurels and Donkeys'

A verbal collage for Remembrance Day. An emotional piece.

Enjoy!

Remembrance

Don’t you think it’s really sad that everyone doesn’t mark Remembrance Day?

It deserves to be remembered.

Not the wars and all the political nonsense. Just the people whose lives got wasted in the process.

Remembrance Day may be British in origin, but now it’s marked all over the world – it’s a time when people remember people whose lives have been lost in conflict. Those millions who believed in something enough to fight for it, or who loved someone enough to try and protect them, or who in some other way felt it was necessary to put their lives on the line. Remembrance Day isn’t about the issues, or the rights and wrongs, or the bloody politicians and profiteers – it’s just about remembering the ones who died sooner than they should have done.

But you’d go a long way to see anyone wearing a poppy in Ireland.

Like a really long way.

I think that’s woeful.

Everyone thinks primarily of the two World Wars in connection with Remembrance Day. Well, 60,000 Irish died in the two World Wars alone – and there was no conscription, they were volunteers. And they weren’t fighting for Britain, they were fighting against something else. You’d think someone would care enough to wear a poppy for them.

And what kind of travesty was that last week? A popular Irish radio station making much of it being the 11^th hour of the 11^th day of the 11^th month of the 11^th year – without a mention of the deeper significance that that particular moment carries for millions of people.

Get your act together Ireland. If your new President can make it his first official duty – to lay a wreath on Remembrance Day – then I reckon it ought to be possible for the Irish to pin on a poppy – or start their own version of poppy day. Even if it’s just a way of clicking ‘Like’ to say we’ve grown up enough, one day a year, to see beyond the politics to the human stories that are the stuff of life. And loss. 

The Tragedies of War

A poppy from our garden for Remembrance Day

Yesterday, in The Challenges of War I started telling you about my husband’s great grandfather, Lieutenant Colonel Harry Moorhouse and Harry’s son, Ronald who fought together at the front from September 1915, first on the Somme and later at Passchendaele. I got as far as 1916, when Ronald was awarded the Military Cross for gallantry.

Today’s story takes us into 1917, and the Third Battle of Ypres, otherwise known as Passchendaele. It was named for the village that it obliterated, and it was one of the bloodiest and most widely remembered battles of the First World War.  Lloyd George, who had become Prime Minister just the year before, later wrote that Passchendaele together ‘with the Somme and Verdun, will always rank as the most grim, futile and bloody fight ever waged in the history of war’. He was probably right.

It’s easy to simplify a battle, nearly 95 years after the event, but of course it wasn’t simple. It’s easy to judge too, and many have stood in judgement over Field Marshall Haig, but he, Plumer – all the architects of that offensive – were only trying to win the war, to do their best for King and country against all the odds. They probably did make mistakes, but I’m not a military strategist. Even so, looking back, it's possible to identify several things that must have compounded to make the horror of Passchendaele inevitable.

At the time, the front line basically extended from Belgium to the French/Swiss border, with one of the areas most under pressure being Ypres – a place within easy reach of the Channel. At all cost – and it was at a cost – Haig needed to prevent the Germans from reaching the Channel, and every year the battles to defend the front line became bloodier and bloodier. By 1917 the scene was set for something pretty catastrophic.

There had been a two year operation – the biggest of its kind in military history – to undermine the German lines with miles of tunnels and galleries in order to blow up their front line. A ‘landscape makeover’ waiting in the wings, if ever there was one. Bear in mind also that this part of Flanders was already reclaimed land, full of dykes and drains, criss-crossed by streams – a flat landscape that could, and often did, get very wet. So the terrain alone was a serious hazard.

The Third Battle of Ypres began in June and went on until November. It started with the explosion as the German lines were blown up – the mines and galleries had been filled with 1 million pounds of high explosive (450,000kg). The after-shocks were felt in London. Then the Allied guns started firing. They fired over 4 million shells to launch the offensive. At this stage, I would imagine that no part of the area was recognisable. And – about a month or so into the battle, it started to rain. It was the worst rainfall for 30 years. Tanks bogged down, soldiers and horses drowned in the unending mud, troops were unable bury the dead. The archetypal pictures of the First World War were born out of scenes such as this.

During the four-month battle, the Allies lost 310,000 men, the Germans 260,000. The Allies gained a few feet here and there, and lost them, and gained them again. It has been estimated that they gained roughly 2 inches (5cm) of ground for each soldier lost. By any calculation, that is expensive ground. But, perhaps even more important than ground gained was that they held the line.

When you consider how appalling life must have been at the front, it’s not surprising that letters home said so little. What could they possibly say? All they could do was send their love, say ‘I’m all right’.

By October 1917, Harry had been given the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and had assumed command of the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry's 4^th Battalion. Ronald, at the age of 22, was a Captain. The 4th Battalion were being held in reserve, ready for action at any moment. That moment came on the night of 8/9 October. In intense darkness, Harry led his men forward, towards the old German positions. The terrain was so bad that progress was slow, and when the 5^th Battalion came under heavy fire, Harry’s men were needed as reinforcements. They too were now in the firing line, and having to make detours to get through land that was an impenetrable morass.

I have seen that ground. Now, over 90 years on, it is a quiet field where cabbages and potatoes are grown. It rises gently up a slope to that rare thing in Flanders, a low ridge. On one side is Wolf Copse, on the other Belle Vue. On 9^th October 1917, the Germans held the high ground, and the fire raining down on the two Battalions was so devastating, it was preventing any advance. Ronald – Captain Moorhouse, bravely led a company of men up the slope in an attempt to capture the high ground and silence the guns. In the ensuing battle, he was badly wounded.

Captain Ronald Wilkinson Moorhouse

He was carried to his father’s headquarters, not far behind the front line. As soon as Harry saw how seriously injured his son was, he insisted on setting out to find a doctor to tend his wounds. Several people tried to go detain him, and go in his place, but his concern for Ronald was so great that he set out himself.

He was shot by sniper fire and died in the arms of one of his men.

Ronald died within the hour.

We understand that this is the only known case of a father and son dying together at Passchendaele. The King and Queen sent a telegram to Susanna, Harry’s wife, to tell her of their deaths. The soldier who had held Harry as he died also wrote to her.

Unsurprisingly, she never really recovered. There weren’t even any graves to visit in the years after the war. It wasn’t until much, much later that the family were able to see their memorial, but eventually the time came to pay a very public tribute to Harry and Ronald, and honour the sacrifice they so gallantly made.

I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.

You can find the first part of this story in The Challenges of War

The Challenges of War.

Before I begin, I would just like to thank everyone who left such generous and kind comments on my entry last week. It was lovely to receive them - and a great encouragement to continue!

This week’s 100 Word Challenge for Grown Ups was to write 100 words with the title, or theme ‘...lest we forget...’

I have to say that, despite Julia’s words to the contrary, I found this much harder than last week’s – but mostly because it was difficult to decide how to use the prompt. It seemed so overwhelmingly associated with Remembrance Day, that I felt I should go off in another direction, but in the end I couldn’t.

There’s a lot of family memory rooted in this one weekend every year, and it is only right that I should honour it.

But first, I want to tell you a story – a true story.

And as we are allowed to include a photograph as part of this week’s challenge, I shall do so, when I get to my entry further on.

My husband’s great grandfather was Harry Moorhouse. He was born in 1869, near Leeds in Yorkshire, and came into the world, as the expression was, hosed and shod. His family owned a woolen mill, but as a young man, making cloth didn’t sing to him as much as the idea of adventure, so instead, at 22, he joined the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, and became a professional soldier. His first active service was in South Africa during the Boer War.

In the early 1890s he married his sweetheart, Susanna Marsdin and they had three children – Ronald Wilkinson, Lydia Marjorie and a second son, Alan. Marjorie, as she was known, was my husband’s grandmother.

When war was declared in 1914, Harry eagerly reported for duty in Wakefield, joining the KOYLI’s 4^th Battalion as a Major. His son Ronald had no intention of being left behind, and, volunteering immediately, received a commission as Second Lieutenant in the same Battalion. Father and son arrived in France together in April 1915.

Just four months later, Harry was wounded. A bullet went through his ankle and he was sent back to England; but by the end of the year had returned to the front, and in January 1916 he received the Distinguished Service Order. He was wounded again during the first days of the Battle of the Somme in July – a bullet this time going through his shoulder, and shrapnel damaging his upper arm. At the time, Harry was standing in for the battalion commander who had himself been been wounded, and he refused to leave his post, but after a further hour and a half he had lost so much blood that he was forced to go to the field hospital. Once again he was sent back to England for medical treatment in Leeds.

Both he and Ronald wrote regular letters home, and we are lucky enough to still have some of these in their tiny, typically early-twentieth century envelopes.  They say very little about what life was like at the front – there was probably no point, as letters were heavily censored – but they are full of love and reassurances.

Ronald meanwhile had been promoted to Temporary Captain, in charge of his own company, a role he obviously fulfilled with great courage and competence, as in April 1917 he led a raid on enemy trenches, commanding 91 men and 4 other officers. Under cover of darkness, their faces blackened, and with a protective barrage of fire exploding all around them, they advanced through mud, wire and craters to the German front line. Unbelievably, they were successful, but their mission was destined to fail, as when they got there it was to find the trenches abandoned, the machine guns removed. However, they immediately came under heavy fire. Calmly and with great leadership, Ronald got all his men away, even though he was wounded himself while helping another injured man back to their own lines. No one was killed and Ronald was sent back to England on a hospital ship, much to his mother’s relief. But the respite didn’t last for long – a month later he returned to the front where he was not only made Captain, but also received the Military Cross for his heroism. He was just 22 years old.

I wish I could tell you that the story of their time in France ended there, but it didn’t. Worse was to come.

I’ll tell you what happened tomorrow.

For now, with Harry and Ronald Moorhouse very much in mind, here is my entry for this week’s 100 word challenge.

The challenge was to write exactly 100 words including the phrase ‘...lest we forget...’

I understand it was supposed to be 100 words, plus the 3 words of the prompt.

If not, then my piece can lose its title.

The photograph is of Lieutenant Colonel Harry Moorehouse, DSO TD, Chevalier de Legion d’Honneur, 4^th Battalion, the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry.

...lest we forget...

...lest we forget the roaring and the thunder,

the shells, the gas, the stench of naked fear,

the broken cries of grown men for their mothers,

the midnight thoughts – ‘Whose madness brought me here?’

...lest we forget the mud, the filth, the anger,

the freezing of the heart as comrades die,

the images of sweethearts, home and young ones

quenched deep in eyes locked, sightless, to the sky.

...lest we forget the fear of sleep  –  of dreaming -

by those returned, unharmed by guns or men;

remember: though the past’s a different country,

today they will be fighting once again.

---

Harry and Ronald's story continues in The Tragedies of War

Where Have all the Children Gone?

I'm knitting a telegraph pole warmer.
I know - I know!
It wasn't actually my idea, but I'm not sure if that makes it better or worse!

It's for the pole outside Beltra Country Market and so far I've completed about six or eight feet of very colourful stripes. I have heard the odd grumble that it's a shocking waste of wool, but I don't agree. Sure, it will take a good bit to finish it, but by and large it is being constructed out of other people's left over balls (of wool, that is!) which wouldn't have been used for much else. And just the sheer daft concept of it has made a lot of people smile.

Anyway, spare a thought for the telegraph pole, standing there in wind, rain, hail and snow, with nothing to do all day but prop up the market's bunting. Oh, and all those telegraphy-pole things of course. I think it will be quite chuffed to have a cheerful, technicolour, stripey Joseph's-coat style warmer.

And it's not just the market members and our shoppers who will enjoy it. I hope it'll brighten up the morning for all the people who drive up and down that road every day, on their way to work, to college, to school - to sign on. 

14.4% of the population, that is. I know it's not just Ireland. The whole world is in a sorry state these days. The G20 Summit doesn't appear to have achieved a huge amount, except accentuate the fate of Greece, the Euro, Italy, Uncle Tom Cobbley and all. Everyone - everything hanging in the balance. Just a short while ago Ireland was at the top of the casualty list, right under the spotlight. And our condition didn't stop being critical just because we got bailed out.

I can't really take that term seriously. It always brings to mind the occasion when, driving in Hong Kong with my sister, we were stopped by a policeman for speeding. He insisted that we should accompany him to the police station 'to bail out!' - to which she caustically replied: 'Why, are you flooded?'

But I digress.
Ireland was bailed out. (It is regularly flooded, you see.)
It's not that I'm ungrateful to the powers that be who put their hands in their pockets on Ireland's behalf, it's just that I wonder what difference it has made to the average Joe Soap walking our streets. And the same goes for lots of other countries too. Instead of being in hock for all the things he signed up for - like a mortgage, a car loan, a credit card or whatever, now everyone in Ireland owes their bodies, their souls and even the unformed aspirations of their minds from now on, even unto the third, fourth and fifth generation. I'm no mathmatician, but this seems an un-do-able equation.

Unless of course people opt for the modus operandi advocated by Blank of Ireland - in which case they may get off debt-free even if not scot-free. But as it stands, the country is in a pretty bad way and financial security is a thing of the past.

It is 18 years ago this very week that we moved into our house. And in that time I think we have run the whole gamut of financial insecurity. Despite that, I have to say I don't regret coming to this beautiful part of Ireland for a minute, and given the chance to turn the clock back, I'd do it all over again. We were much younger then, and when you are young, financial security isn't generally your prime motivating force. Luckily - or none of us would have any adventures at all.

And I suppose it was an adventure. It was certainly a leap out of our comfort zone at the time, moving from South London to the west of Ireland, where the locals assumed we only had one ulterior motive. 'Oh, so you surf then?'
Surf? SURF?
Er - no!

We hadn't noticed the surf.
It was only later we discovered that the people who moved here generally came for the waves. It was the house we fell in love with. In truth, we hadn't even noticed the village - which is so tiny you daren't blink - but when we did, we found that it had a burnt out house, several derelict buildings and, eerily, no young people. Someone locally described it to us as: 'A one-horse village, and the horse has left.' Certainly all the kids had left. They routinely left when they finished school, because there was nothing to stay for. Everyone had a son in America, a daughter in England, a nephew in Australia...

The Irish are good at emigrating. They have had lots of practice. Back in the 1830s, when the Great Famine was still just a shadow on their horizon, cholera devastated much of Sligo, in many places leaving 'barely enough living to bury the dead.' And then, fifteen years later, cataclysmic food shortages decimated the remaining population and millions, as many as were able, left Ireland to make a new life anywhere that could offer them food, work and a future.

All tragedies in history leave a permanent scar on the peoples that endure them, but we didn't expect to find the legacy of that trauma still having such a potent effect 150 years on - people still leaving their country for the same reasons that caused their forebears to leave.

That was 18 years ago - the early 90s, a long time ago. You'd hope things had changed in the interim.
Sure, there was the much vaunted Celtic Tiger that leapt, wild and exotic into our midst, but sadly, like all wild, exotic things, its stay was short and glorious. Especially short. Perhaps it would have been better all round if it had been a paper tiger. Because now the country seems to be back in that deeply-hollowed, dark, familiar place that it hoped was a thing of the past. The place that has made the Irish the tough, resilient people they are.

Some reports state that 1000 people a week have been leaving Ireland for pastures new this year. Who knows if that is an accurate figure. But with a population of around just 4million, it's a lot of people if it is true. Just a few days ago my sons' friend told us that this year alone, more than 150 young people, known to her, have left from the village and its environs. Mostly to Australia and New Zealand.Who can blame them, if there is no work here, nothing for them to stay for? My own sons left a few years ago, to make their lives elsewhere.

The economic cost to the country of letting so much young blood slip away is one thing, but it is not the only - and for many not even the primary - consideration. The underlying cost of this financial crisis is the loss of our children. Our unformed aspirations are centred around our young, and for so many, these hopes and dreams will now come into being far away as the diaspora expands again. The biggest tragedy for Ireland is that once again it has returned to mourning its living sons and daughters, to missing them - as I do mine - 'like the deserts miss the rain'.

You need to be resilient.

So while I - while all of us - wait for the tide to turn, I will, like Madame Guillotine, continue with my knitting. It won't change anything. And I can't even claim any creative ingenuity, unlike my friend Frewin who knits handbags from old t-shirts, but one thing I do know - a telegraph pole warmer isn't a waste of wool. If it makes people around here laugh, or even just smile, then it's bloody marvellous.

Challenges!

A friend has put me on to the 100 Word Challenge for Grown Ups

This could make your brain ache!

I have come to this sadly late, but hopefully not too late. You might even want to join in too.

This week's challenge is to write four lines that scan with the very ditty I quoted a few days ago! You guessed it -

Remember remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder, treason
Should ever be forgot…


Just to make life more interesting - or difficult - it can only contain 21 words and must include the phrase 'in winter we shiver'

I shall obviously have to think about this from a much, much higher plane, as all I have come up with so far is this:

In winter we shiver, shudder and quiver,
Temperature, headache and what,
Hayfever in summer, seasonal bummer,
There’s no escape from snot...


Sorry - that really has lowered the tone...

Keep calm - and waste not

I bought a waste paper bin yesterday.
I didn't set out to buy one, but every now and then, in lieu of holidays, I take a day off and scarper. It's a great way of shimmying down from the edge when life is shoving you in the back.
Yesterday was one of those rare and joyous days. And while I was out, I bought a bin.

Oh wow - 'be still my beating heart', I hear you cry.
Fair enough. Not the most exciting of purchases. (I did buy one or two other things, but the bin is the one that stands out.)
It's one of those British retro-style items, reminiscent of the World War II era.
It's pillar-box red with a stylised crown and a slogan on it.
The slogan reads: 'Keep calm and carry on'.
I would have preferred 'Keep calm and eat cake', or even better 'Keep calm and have a gin & tonic', but sadly neither of those were on offer.

How thrilling is that?

I could have had 'Waste not, want not'. In fact that was the one I picked up first, but when it came to it, I just couldn't do it.

Daft really.

If you are my age, then your parents were either war-youngsters, or actually took an active role in WWII.
If you are a bit younger, then maybe your grandparents lived through the war.
If you are younger still, then you won't have a clue what I'm on about.
But the rest of us know that anyone who lived through the war can't throw away so much as a length of string or a candle stump.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking thrift, even thrift that to the uninitiated smacks of parsimony..
But where thrift is concerned, initiation does help.
Unless you've lived through the war - any war, probably - I don't suppose you can ever understand what chronic shortage really means. I certainly don't.
It's hard to imagine, after the surfeits of our own times, but in Britain, people were allowed just 1 egg, 2oz (not quite 60g) butter and 2oz cheese per person per week - less if it wasn't available. And meat, sugar, flour, jam etc etc etc were all rationed too.

And it wasn't just for the six years of the war - rationing didn't end until 1954!
I seem to spend a good deal of time scratching my head wondering what to make for dinner.
Can you imagine trying to feed a family back in those days?
And it wasn't just food. Clothes were rationed too. Try telling the average girl today that her clothes were going to be rationed from now on. Seriously rationed. No more Saturday afternoons in the mall.

Not everything was rationed. Some things were simply unobtainable.

So you can't exactly blame the older generation for hanging on to stuff - understandably, waste not, want not was their credo.

I was lucky enough to grow up in an era and environment of plenty, but old habits don't die, so I was brought up with the concept of 'reduce, recycle and reuse' long before the ad men turned it into a slogan to save the world.



Of course, it wasn't just me. Lots of people were brought up that way.
Buy hey - no one's perfect! Every generation kicks back at the one that brought them up.
It's a great concept. It's even a great slogan. I love the idea of it, and I wholeheartedly support it. And gees-louise, we surely do need to adopt it because over the last 60 years we have totally messed up.
But I don't hang on to every bit of string and candle stump.
Instead I live with a virtual wagging finger, with a shadow of disapproval falling over me every time I chuck a plastic bag, dump a perfectly good paper carrier, scrunch tin foil, scrumple up gift wrap or ditch the fag-end of a bar of soap.

But the greatest sin of all is to throw food away.

I may not be squeaky clean on the tin foil and plastic bag front, but I really baulk at binning food.

Apparently (in the British Isles anyway), - if everyone threw one in three of their carrier bags away as they left the supermarket each week, that is how much of their purchase - on average - they are going to waste.
Whaaat?

You don't need to be a war-baby to be utterly appalled by that.
What happened to 'left-overs'?
What happened to 'Ort Pie' - something delicious constructed from whatever happened to be left over in the fridge?
Well, ok, an attempt at something delicious! In the name of culinary inventiveness or, failing that, pure unadulterated skint-ness, it's got to be worth a try.

Nothing - well, practically nothing - well, very little is ever thrown away in our house.
(How's that for self-rightousness?)
Before I fall off my own pedestal, I'd better confess.
For one thing, we are both based at home, so if something is left over from supper, it can be made into lunch the next day.
For another, I do have a battery of  back-up options. There is a strict protocol governing anything rejected by humans. First refusal = dogs. Second refusal = cats. Third refusal = hens, and if all else fails, final refusal = the bird table. I have to say, not much makes it that far down the line. Occasionally I by-pass the line and make an outright donation to the hens or the bird-table. Bread, for example, that has turned silently to the texture of old plasterboard. Ends of cheese that have transformed into transluscent plastic. (How does cheese do that?)

Second refusal = cats

And then - while I'm still in the confessional - there's the fungus-y stuff. The container in the back of the fridge that you pull out and look at and think - that needs eating. Um - maybe not tonight though... So you put it back. And back. Until eventually it feels so unloved it grows its own comfort blanket.

There are some things that have to be thrown away.

Speaking of comfort blankets and disposal, I had an interesting experience recently. I was away for a week, helping my brother move house. Lovingly - rather virtuously, I thought - I made a large casserole to keep the troops going for a few days in my absence. I left it on top of the oven.. About a week after I got home, I rooted in the cupboard for the casserole dish and fished it out. Gosh, I thought to myself, this old pot is even heavier than I thought it was.
Hah!
When I opened it, there was the stew. Or rather, there were the mountains of the moon, comprising several species of fungus hitherto unknown to science.
Don't even ask...

(But yes, by some miracle, we are still co-habiting. Acceptance is just one of the many marvels of the human psyche.)

But for all our sins and oversights, there is very little that gets thrown away (or buried in a deep hole, far from the prying noses of rats and foxes).
Something of the make-do and mend of my childhood has lingered in there somewhere.
Probably just as well, with all of us the world over, teetering on the edge of serious shortages of money and food and resources. I can't see anyone in the first world taking very well to rationing though.
Hopefully it won't come to that. But maybe the shadow of it still hangs over us. Like some sort of genetic imprint.
I guess that's why 'Waste not, want not' was just a step too far. A truth too close to the bone.

I'd rather stay calm and eat cake. But if I can't do that, I'll opt for staying calm and carrying on.

Stay calm and eat cake