Write-Place

Posts From the Pasts - 20th November 2014 Three things have moved me to resurrect this blog today which has not been posted on since February this year. It's not that I have not been "moved" (insert as appropriate -  shocked, angry, happy, joyful, thankful, grateful, upset, furious, insensed  ) for the last 9 months because believe me, I have. But the rapidly diminishing brain cells have often prevented me writing it down.  The other blogs / pages that I post are specific to a theme so that leaves me with Write-Place to, well, write other stuff. I have checked back to the original gumph of what I said in 2008 that I intended posting on it and am pleased to be reminded that I said almost anything was appropriate, so here we  are.  I was brought up in a family culture that listened to and discussed the weather forecasts on the radio and then television and "lighting up time" was noted faithfully. Not that we ever had a car but cycling was an important means ...

Today I have been trying to think of a good reason to post on this blog, considering that I have only made one post this year and that this was around 8 months ago. It is so long ago that I had, inevitably, not only forgotten the password, but how to sign in to it. My  other blog  which has been keeping me occupied is on Wordpress, a different set-up to Blogger. Facebook

Is your memory bad ?  Well, it's actually worse than you think, it seems.  A study by researchers at  Northwestern University, Chicago shows that o ur memory is a poor way of recording events. Maybe  a better way is to film and photograph every detail of every experience that we have over a lifetime so that we can check back that what we think happened, really did.  Some of us are well on the way to that scenario already. There's hardly a holiday, birthday, day out with friends or visit to the supermarket that is not photographed, Instagramed and voice recorded to be then "shared" on social media sites to every corner of the globe, almost in real time. We have hardly had time to digest and internalise the event or our feelings about it before it's out there, a record in quite a lot of detail, for all time. Or for as long as we have the current equipment to watch and listen to it. I am as guilty as the next person for this of course and often wonder if the...

11th November. Commemorated as Armistice Day and marked with 2 minutes silence while people pay their respects to those who died during the First World War. Yesterday, Sunday, wreaths were laid at the Cenotaph in Whitehall and at hundreds of others across the country. Today across the world, memorial services will be held and thousands will quietly reflect on the enormity and consequences of that war. We also remember other wars and battles that have taken place where so many lives have been lost and so many families broken. WW2, the Cold War, the Gulf War, the Korean War,Vietnam, Falklands, Iraq, Afghanistan and many wars in the Middle East and Africa that continue to rage today and destroy people. It is easy to be sanctimonious and say that all wars should stop now or naieve and believe that there will ever be world peace. Sometimes it seems that if there ever was peace on this earth, then we would go further afield and declare war on other planets. I am not clever enough or ...

Today, 11th September 2013 is the 12th anniversary of the attacks on USA that killed almost 3,000. I would not dream of making a comment on how the family and friends of those people felt then or feel now. No words could ever justifiably describe the horror and devastation. We remember that awful event swearing that we will never allow anything like that to happen again. Hundreds of  human beings obliterated forever and hundreds more injured and maimed. We usually recall specific major terrible events by noting what we were doing at the time that we heard the announcement. For my generation that is often when President Kennedy was killed, when John Lennon was killed, when Diana (then Princess) was killed.   My parents generation remember the announcement of the start of WW2 and also the ending. All these events involved the unnecessary deaths of ordinary people - yes of course, even the ending of a war, where we in Britain rejoiced, while others died in the most ter...