ST VALENTINE'S DAY
I was eighty years old last week on St Valentine's day. It was a wonderful day in many ways because I found that a lot more people cared about me than I had ever suspected. One of the ways this became evident was when I was given the best birthday card in the world, a montage of over 150 pictures of various aspects of my life, a sort of pictorial 'This Is Your Life' made for me by my friend Kevin Hylands, it's quite wonderful and is now on my wall where it will be a constant reminder of a very good day. One of the images that Kevin used is the one below, my first school photograph in 1940 at the age of four years and four months.
The power of an image is what it triggers in you. Of course it takes me back 76 years to Hope Memorial School in Stockport but also triggers memories of the war. Can you see a piece of string round my neck? My identity disc was hung on it, useful for the authorities if I was killed in the bombing, it would identify the body. I later found out that this matter of identification was also the reason why we were all photographed, if I remember rightly it was a free service but nobody told us why. I thought back to the nights spent in the Anderson shelter in the back garden, bombs and shrapnel raining down from the sky and my dad in his ARP uniform going out during the raids to make sure nobody was showing a light.
This train of thought led me today and the blanket coverage in the news of Mr Cameron's efforts to get us a 'better deal' in Europe, whatever that is. I suppose it's only the crumblies like me that remember the war when we think of the EU but I can assure you that what happened to us then is a very powerful argument for staying in the EU and supporting the structures that have kept us safe from continental wars for over seventy years. We bleat on about mindless legislation on straight bananas (untrue of course) and petty regulations but we forget the really important things like peace and security.
The same thing applies to schools, so many people complain about standards of education and discipline and yet are quiet when teachers' status and pay are eroded. They should thank God that they don't have to makes sure their child has its gas mask with it in a little cardboard box on a piece of string and that they have no worries about falling shrapnel or booby trap butterfly bombs. It may well be that we do best for ourselves and our children if we support the teachers and the concept of the EU as well. One thing is certain, even though I enjoyed collecting shrapnel I don't want to see our kids doing the same. Wonderful what one picture can trigger off in your mind.
Stanley at four years old in 1940.
