June 7th 2014

 

What a day. Today I have been selling the contents of Julie's house, with her permission of course. It's the final normal weekend in Wiltshire, however there was nothing normal about today. Julie placed some items onto the Pewsey Notice Board and then as she had to head off and buy some plants for a client, I took over the items for sale experience on the keyboard. I've never sold so much stuff in my life. By the end of the day we'd sold the fireplace, table and chairs, washing machine many times over, 2 conifers in pots, the table and chairs outside and this tile cutter. We'd also sold the lawn mower so it was a last dash to cut the grass before it went  - the grass may be shaggy by the time Emma moves in next Monday. I only made it as seconds after the grass was cut there was a clap of thunder and the heavens opened, a deluge. Plenty of lasts happening at the moment but for very positive reasons. There is no doubting I shall miss Wiltshire but there is a lot of exploring to do in Somerset from now on.

June 6th 2014

Today is the 70th Anniversary of D Day, June 6th 1944. The largest ever seaborne invasion in history.

I have spent the morning listening to the recollections of the soldiers and sailors with a tear in my eye. Even though I was born 20 years after D Day, my parents who were teenagers in 1944 made me very interested in the history of World War 2 from an early age. In my safe, pampered life I can not imagine how it felt for my mother to be evacuated at the age of 8 to the Lake District to escape the bombs. Nor how my father as a child felt spending night after night in an air raid shelter, not knowing if they would survive the night as the drone of planes overhead heralded another bombing of the River Tyne shipyards. My maternal grandfather was an arctic convoy Merchant Navy Captain working to the Royal Navy and my paternal grandfather being Foreman electrician at Redheads Shipyards in South Shields was exempt from fighting but regularly slept and worked 7 days a week 24 hours a day there to ensure the ships were repaired and back out to sea. I remember him recalling how a Royal Navy ship (I forget the name) came in to be repaired after being bombed and burnt out, only to discover it was the ship his brother-in-law had been killed on. Again, imagining how he felt knowing that doesn't come easy.

The two generations that fought in World War 1 and World War 2 really were a breed apart. Tough, stoical, no nonsense people who just stood their ground and fought for their very existence. Only now are many of them talking about their experiences. For the lucky ones who survived they just locked the horror away and began life again after the war. I do not think we will see their likes again.

That invasion is being celebrated, if that is the right word, as the last major commemoration of this event by living veterans at Arromanches beach and elsewhere. As one commentator of the events today summed up very well while talking to a veteran " I know of teenagers today who have temper tantrums if their broadband connection fails, at 19 you ran down a landing craft ramp into a hail of bullets" The veteran replied " I ran without thinking, my best friend died instantly we hit the beach and my other friend was shot directly infront of me, he probably died saving me from that bullet - my only aim was to run as fast as I could, I had no other thought, other than to live" 




copyright AP via BBC

  And that comment above anything else I've heard today brings about a poignant memory for me which sums up why we should remember these now elderly men. The image above is of an American veteran taken at the ceremony at Aramanches this morning, I don't know his name. Around 15 years ago I took my parents over to the Normandy beaches as my father in particular wanted to visit somewhere as a child he had heard so much about. I remember parking the car near Gold (Arromanches) beach and walking onto the wonderful sandy beach, still littered with remnants of the Mulberry Harbours. My father walked off and stood for 20 minutes by himself by the waters edge looking in the direction of Britain. I didn't join him but watched him from one of the Mulberry wrecks, wondering what was he thinking? As I stood there four men in their 70's came up to me and asked me if I could take their photograph together next to the Mulberry wreck. I did and then we struck up a conversation. They were American and all had been on the beach on day 1 of D Day. Like the veteran above, I never got to know their names but they told me all about their experiences and none of them had been back to this beach since June 1944. I vividly remember one of the group explaining to me in a most matter of fact way, how he ran off the ramp of the landing craft and sinking into the soft sand on the beach, his adrenaline kicked in and he sprinted towards the cliffs for protection. He only stopped running when he found shelter half way up the cliff and then as his company joined him they fought their way up to the top and over. It took many hours under heavy gunfire to cross the beach and scale the cliff.

Poignantly he then added "I've come back today as I never saw this beach at the time" I was a bit unsure what he meant and so he added " the landing craft hit the beach and I ran, just ran, I didn't know where I was, or what I was running to, it was blind terror driving me forwards as I ran, I was focused on a concrete wall in front of me that was all.... I had no idea what was happening around, behind or infront of me although the noise was so deafening if felt like it was silent, a strange feeling.... so coming back today is the first time I've been able to see the beach I ran over......it's a very long way"

There was a pause as a tear filled his eye and he looked away from me and out to sea. Without looking at me he added with a now broken voice, "so many friends died here I can still see their faces......."

After a while he composed himself and thanked me for taking the photographs, adding "I'll not come back again, its too painful".

I watched the four men walk back towards the town. They are the only people I have ever met who were on the beaches on D Day. I met them as strangers and they left as strangers and we will never meet again. Yet in that brief 10 minutes we stood on Gold beach together there was a connection. The selfless action of complete strangers 20 years before I was born, allowed me to live as free a life as I wanted as a young man 35 years later.

And that is why today is important, Lest We Forget.

June 5th 2014

 

A slightly odd image for today as it is of a long playing record by Monty Python that I purchased in 1979. That fact is irrelevant as the reason this image adorns todays thoughts is that at the end of a very busy, but very productive day I received an email which even in the depths of winter would make me hop, skip and jump about the place like a loon. Sadly I can't say anything further that will make any sense at the moment, but seeing this image will remind me how I felt seeing that email at 5.30pm tonight. There are times in life when a purpose is placed at our feet, I feel that today my feet do have a purpose, Brian.

June 4th 2014

I stumbled into a meeting today that was both inspirational and informative; that's something you don't often hear! To be more accurate I was invited to the BBC's Rural Affairs Committee meeting, held this morning. Being a bit green around the ears I had no idea what to expect, thus thinking this was a routine production meeting I shambled into conference room A, slightly late and bedecked in my classic media tattered rags. Ahead of me an island table, 20 or so name places of which the first one I read was Lord Peter Melchett, ex head of Greenpeace and now policy adviser to the Soil Association. Gulp, what have I been invited to? Well I need not have worried, everyone was uber friendly and the morning was spent listening to the great and the good from the world of rural affairs, letting us BBC chaps know what was happening and giving steerage as to where the top stories may be coming from in the coming months. As the only person there from the NHU Radio team it was fascinating to see and hear so many great speakers offering insight. 3 hours passed in a flash, however the day will remain with me for a while yet.

June 3rd 2014

 

I pass this view nearly every morning on the way into work and yet something this morning made me stop and take a photograph. This is the river Banwell which rises in the village of Banwell on the northern slopes of the Mendips Hills, about 8 miles from where this photograph was taken. Eventually the river flows into the Bristol Channel at Woodspring Bay. Until 1915 the area where the river rose was a series of freshwater springs on the Mendip slopes. The springs were capped to provide water for the Bristol Water Works and the large pool into which the springs once bubbled up into was filled in and is now the village bowling green. This view however is about a quarter of a mile from my house. I live on the very edge of a modern estate and each morning I turn out of my drive, turn right at the junction and drive along the narrow lane to the main road 3 miles away at Hewish. As I cross the tiny humped back bridge I always slow down and look left and right to see what's happening along the river. Often there is a grey heron here, or little grebe, once a kingfisher and as today, mallard.  Adjacent to the bridge is the remnants of a ford which presumably was in use until the area became more built up. At this point the river is tidal and at times of high tide the river can be almost overflowing the banks. Today however is was just a pastoral scene of English rural idyll. Commuting to work isn't bad if this is the daily view.

June 2nd 2014

 

Tonight I didn't get back home from work until 8pm and so it was a night for doing nothing. Which was apt as I'd set my mind to watch the final episode of Hinterland. This Welsh noir detective series has been an absolute delight to watch from the very beginning. The acting in this series by unknown Welsh actors has been superb throughout, every character has been believable in the role they have been scripted to. The direction and editing has avoided every cliché with camera cut away's driving the story forwards, rather than obvious lines. Best of all the plot lines have twisted and turned around a theme with many an unexpected outcome. And so as sat watching Hinterland on the laptop as the light began to fade a view I've seen many many times provided the impetus for my thoughts today. Sometimes that house opposite in late evening is bathed in golden sunlight. It's not a bad view that's for sure and will be Julie's new view 2 weeks from today.

June 1st 2014

 

No rest for the wicked. Today was a day to crack on with the packing and dismantling. We now have a date for Julie to move to my house, June 16th. Julie is a wonderful gardener, possibly why she does this for a living and so it was symbolic that today I worked on dismantling the greenhouse. Gardening gives Julie a connection to the soil and the countryside is where her spiritual home is. She is giving up a lot to move 80 miles west to Somerset. It's appreciated more than I can ever say. So today I had a go at dismantling the greenhouse and by the end of the afternoon, a very hot afternoon, it was almost dismantled. Next Monday the garden pots, greenhouse and garage detritus head to Somerset in a van ahead of the main move. I've taken photos otherwise I'll forget how this was constructed, which is why these images may seem odd. An aid memoir. In the middle of this some people arrived from Bedwyn to collect the spare bed which Julie had sold to them. A fair few items have now been sold, the house is beginning to look empty. We're moving on physically and mentally at last.