Wholly Evil not Redeemed by Glory

It is thirty years today since the surrender of the Argentinean forces in the Falklands conflict. And, although I was only twelve years old at the time, it’s a measure of the power of the idea of war that I still flinch at typing those words; in particular the choice to substitute the mealy mouthed ‘conflict’ at the end of that sentence.

So is the surrender of the Falkland Islands something to celebrate? Was it then? Is it now?

There are a number of competing narratives about the Falklands War, about any war. I’ve been working with GothicDaughter on her World War Two project this week and reflecting on the stories we tell about that conflict.

The post war British generation have been taught to take pride in our Allied victory: that we stood alone, that we fought bravely and liberated Europe and the World from the Axis. We learned this from the popular culture of our childhoods  – the Victor annuals, Escape from Colditz, the Achtung-Schnell playground games. My daughters don’t have that – the story of the Second World War is pretty much new to them. They want me to tell it to them. So what should I tell them?

One of the trickiest things for me about being a parent is being required to give your opinion on extremely complicated matters to small children who are – for now – listening quite carefully to what you’re saying. And, unfortunately, they’ve caught me at quite a bad time for having an opinion about anything. What do I think about the Second World War, the Falklands War, about any war?

When I was a teenager I was supersure about almost everything, especially about the decisions made by Thatcher. But nowadays I have lost all track of the black and white and the right and wrong. It’s all relative isn’t it? There are two sides to everything, possibly three, maybe more. And these days when I’m asked for my opinion on most things well – my response is, it seems, to climb right onto the fence. And stay there.*

But it’s not really an answer to say, in answer to the question, should we have gone to war, in 1939 (or for that matter, in 1982, or in 2003) – um, dunno girls. Ask me tomorrow? Maybe? Maybe not? Ask me in fifty years time when history has given a bit more perspective?

It’s a cliché to say that the narrative of a war is the justification of the victors; it’s also formed by the delusions of the defeated. And there isn’t ever one story of war, any war – there are millions of individual stories, all competing and clamouring with each other.

And we want, so much, to be proud of ourselves as a country. To want to be proud of those who fought, who were wounded or who paid the ultimate price. We don’t have the stomach for any other story, any story that renders that sacrifice pointless. And who can blame us? We wouldn’t want any life to have been lost for no reason, for the wrong reasons.

So what narrative do I pass down about these wars, currently so relevant to our narrative in 2012? Because we might just need to think about whether we can justify sending more men, more precious sons and fathers and brothers and uncles, to their deaths to protect the self-determination of the Falklands Islands again, before too long.

And as country after country across Europe falls deeper into austerity and teeters on the brink of anarchy, and Germany dominates Europe again – should I tell my daughters to fear Germany or to be grateful? Is the history of the twentieth century even relevant to their narratives? Should we pull out of Afghanistan, intervene in Syria? Well?

The view from this fence is, well, not black and white. In every conflict there is bravery and there is cowardice. There are a few good reasons for going to war, and many many bad ones. But the simple explanation offered, at the time or after, whatever it is, is probably wrong, or at least only partially right.

But there are two quotes that I think I can pass on to my daughters without flinching. The first is Si vis pacem, para bellum  – a Latin phrase that is best translated as, “If you wish for peace, prepare for war”. The reality of human society is that sometimes, regretfully, only force will make a difference.

The other is a phrase I heard repeated by a Second World War historian this week – that war is wholly evil, not redeemed by glory.

War is sometimes necessary, always evil, but – and I fear this is the only thing I can be certain of – it is an unignorable reality that will be every bit a part of my daughters’ life-narratives as it has been for mine, for yours, and for all of us.

*In this respect, I have some sympathy for David Cameron and his constant flip flopping about. God knows I would find it hard to make up my mind about pasties too. What I can’t forgive him for, though, is that EVERY SINGLE TIME I hear the rules about whether pasties are cooling down, or on a tray, or being carried away by kangaroos in their furry pouches I LISTEN REALLY CAREFULLY like the earnestly interested citizen I am and try and understand it. WHY?? I honestly don’t know but all that pasty chat is now filling that corner of my brain that I was saving for learning the cello. You know, someday. Or maybe reading Ulysses. HA just kidding. I have already read Ulysses. Well the first ten pages. Twice.

 

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Our mother, prince and friend

I have been inhibited from blogging this week as, whilst I have a long list of things to write about on my phone (e.g. ‘Pimms? Portion sizes? What does a Kindle smell like?’), I rather feel that I can’t write until about any of that until I have written about The Elephant in the Room.

Yes, the French Open.

No, no not really the French Open. In fact I don’t really know what the French Open is. I just took the first thing I saw from the front page of the BBC news, the Dark End of the front page headed Sport. I’m guessing tennis or possibly golf?

Anyway I digress. I feel it would be rather ignoring the spirit of the age, or at least the weekend, if I didn’t write about the Jubilee.

The problem is, though, I don’t actually have an opinion on the subject. Thirty years ago, even twenty, I would have been able to produce an opinion about the royal family. A strongly-worded, if not strongly-felt, opinion with some wild hand gestures and possibly earnest hyperbole. I probably even managed an opinion about my first jubilee in 1977 and even the second one ten years ago. In fact I’m possibly just suffering from Jubilee-fatigue.

But even the old flip-flopper David Cameron has an opinion about the Jubilee. I heard him on the radio yesterday, opining that the country had joined together, ‘to celebrate something VERY IMPORTANT.’

VERY IMPORTANT?? You see that’s the kind of talk that makes me very itchy. I am not sure what this weekend has been about but I’m pretty sure that it’s not been anything VERY IMPORTANT. Unless I have completed missed the point. Not for the first time. But I think that, if you asked the 60 odd million in the country and all the currently homesick Brits, what this weekend was about, and what we were celebrating, they’d all give you a different answer.

Some of them would have said, I guess, that we have been celebrating what it’s like to be British in 2012; and I think on that score we can chalk up a resounding success. A lot of brave and stoical partying in the rain, steadfast damp drinking and some really rather well-organised events. Macca in a bad wig and a ridiculous overdose of Gary Barlow, who has taken the short route from national joke to national treasure and even – God have mercy on us all – a heartthrob.

We have also been celebrating, perhaps, a sense of community. Big Dave is terribly keen on that as we all know, planning to replace hospitals with community-run plaster-and-Germolene boxes before too long (if he doesn’t change his mind in the meantime of course).

But on the other hand I’m not sure that we need the Jubilee to bring us together, do we? I mean this weekend I was indeed standing in a field with many of my close neighbours drinking Pimms in the lightly drizzle and wishing I’d brought a (hip) flask – but that’s not that different from any other chilly June Saturday to be honest.

The British sense of community is, I’d say, fairly robust, in village, town and city alike. Last year we looped bunting round for the royal wedding and just a few weeks later we all got cross together when the Extreme Shoplifters smashed up windows and nabbed a few pairs of trainers. Yes, we came together for this, but we didn’t really need the excuse. We’d have found one anyway. Almost every weekend communities come together in all sorts of ways and they don’t need to wave flags or sing the national anthem (basically unsingable in every key by the way) at the end to give the occasion meaning.

I guess what DC was implying was that we are celebrating the Queen being on the throne for 60 years. The fact that she has lived so long. Can we get behind that? As I say, I’m not sure what I feel about the Queen. I certainly don’t love her. I don’t have any strong feelings about her at all if I’m honest. I worked for her some years ago and I would say 1. She was surprisingly short and 2. She pays very well and provides lovely sandwiches. But that’s not enough to move us much further forward.

The truth is, when I think about her sixty years of rigid duty, of endless dinners and openings and tedious engagements, I can feel only pity. I am sure this is my own personal prejudices at play here. The idea of so much scrutiny, so little privacy, the tight, tight boundaries of protocol – it’s pretty much my worst nightmare.

And all the gorgeous trappings of luxury cannot, can they, make up for the extraordinary lack of choice she has faced in her life. Can the knowledge of duty tirelessly and assiduously done ever compensate for the thousand other possible lives and pathways that a lifetime could have taken her?

And when I hear my children singing songs of gratitude for all the factory openings and civic wavings and hand shakings – I can’t help but think, well, that’s a bit paltry isn’t it? A slightly rubbish song of thanks, in exchange for a whole life? We made her. It was us. She had no choice. Our thanks aren’t really enough.

And so, maybe, before we wheel out the festives again in ten years time (because the smart money’s on a Platinum jubilee isn’t it?) how about we give her ten years off. Not an abdication (soz Charles). Just a gap decade. Time to ‘find herself’ and take drugs on a beach in Goa or ride in a Cadillac down Route 66 or whatever she might want to do.

That would really be a celebration, and a genuine vote of thanks for everything she has given to this country. But come your 96th birthday, we expect you to get back to opening stuff again.

I’d say that seems like a fair deal. Ma’am. And thanks for those lovely sandwiches back in 1993. I honestly still think about them.

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Go to your wide futures

Do you remember your last day of school? It’s a good long while ago for me, but I can still recall the slightly sick feeling of teetering on the threshold of a number of possible tomorrows, even 24 years later.

Well yesterday was the last day of Real School for this year’s batch of fresh-faced teeterers, and rarely have I experienced a more bitter-sweet combination of emotions as I watched them hesitate at the door to their future; there were at least as many regretful backward glancers as confident forward gazers.

Being a teacher is a bit like being a dog-fosterer, in OH SO many ways (especially the need for constant cajoling and little bribey-treats to get them to actually do anything you want); but in particular it’s hard not to get attached even though you know it’s just a short time before you will have to say goodbye forever. And I am particularly attached to this particular pack of recalcitrant, untrainable hounds. Not just because they are the first bunch of leavers that I have taught but also because I have grown to know some of them, not just as students but as individuals, as debaters and poets and writers and providers of amusing banter. And yes I don’t mind admitting I’m going to miss having some of them around very much indeed.

I have been a teacher now for three years and as I have said before, it is almost nothing like I thought it would be and precious little like it is in the films. Hardly anyone is enraptured by my heartfelt poetry readings*. There is very little actual time spent importing of my priceless wisdom on matters of LIFE and so on to a sea of silent upturned faces**, or inciting the class to anarchy while standing on tables. There is, however, quite a lot of laughter, a ridiculous amount of filing and a few episodes of actual learning of stuff. More often than not, though, the person learning stuff is me.

In my very last lesson with Y13, a student asked me ‘What’s your favourite inspirational quote, Miss?’ I did a little goldfish impression for a few seconds, before I had to admit that I hadn’t got one. The disappointment in the room was palpable – what kind of teacher am I after all, if I can’t sum up my philosophy of life in a pithy well-chosen phrase. I finally stumbled upon my mantra for last summer – Enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think. It was only later that I remembered – that was in fact given to me by TicTac Girl, who was 17 at the time. Which only goes to demonstrate my first point very neatly, which is:

1.             Age is a very very ambiguous concept

I’ve blogged before about the fact that teaching has taught me many things, but chief among them is this – that age doesn’t bring wisdom and that many of the people I teach have a great deal to tell me about many things. What we have on our side as adults is experience, but that doesn’t always work in our favour – sometimes experience makes us cynical, distrustful and jaded. I have encountered more kindness and patience and understanding and tolerance in the classroom than I ever experienced in the workplace, and I am grateful for it, as it’s not too much to say that it has restored my somewhat-faded faith in humanity.

And once I’d put aside my prejudices and cultural baggage about young people, then I was privileged to enjoy some incredibly enlightening conversations about all manner of things, from Aristotle to Larkin, via ethics, anime, politics, songs in E minor, theology, whether the ukelele is an actual musical instrument, history, whether mermaids are better than pirates, philosophy and cake. Actually many many things about cake.

Young people haven’t yet bought into the idea that they don’t have time to think, and nor have they signed up to whatever someone else is telling them they’re supposed to think. One or two of them even managed to say something new and interesting about Milton, which is nothing short of a flipping miracle worthy of Heaven itself.

2. Poets can be very very competitive

You have literally no idea what competitive looks like until you put a bunch of talented young writers in a room together with a rather subjective scoring system and a box of Maltesers on offer as the prize for the ‘best’. You should try it sometime but make sure you know where the nearest exit is when the results are announced in case you need to be out of there sharpish.

3. A very fierce card-game called Irish Snap

Which, when played with the fiercely competitive poets, can lead to actual injuries, sometimes needing plasters.

4. Being a teenager is still a tough gig 

God is it ever.

5. It’s probably not a good idea to get into a tug of war competition with a bunch of competitive 18 year olds.

Especially if you are still nursing a fresh Irish Snap injury.

So thanks to you all for all the words and the conversations, the jokes and the laughter, and for making my job seem like the very best in the world. And I hope that, despite all the many obstacles put in my way by the needs of the curriculum and the exam board, I hope that I have managed to teach you a few things too along the way. I’ll miss you all and try not to think about results day yet, OK?

And now I’ve had a bit of time to think of it, I have come up with a quote that, while it may not be exactly inspirational, I can tell you is true and right based on the only thing I’m bringing to the table – experience.

If you cling fast and have faith, then nothing, nothing, is ever impossible.

 

*In fact the other day a boy started to pack his bag to go while I was still mid-stanza and BOY I’d say that was a Bad Move.

** Though yesterday in the middle of a discussion about love a year 7 girl did put her head in her hands and wail “I am SO CONFUSED,” which I’d say is a useful thing for her to understand on balance at the age of 11.

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Springtime in The Village

I write this in a delightful hazy evening in late May – springtime is just blooming and blossoming into the promise of early summer. The swallows are swooping (or they may be house martins or even the Beautiful South – to be honest I’m shaky on the difference). The smell of combined carbonisation of many barbequed meats drifts over the fences and the only sound to be heard is the sizzle of cold beer bottles against sunburnt flesh.

When the weather turns like this it’s tempting to think that it’s going to be sunny and warm till October. Well it had better be now I’ve shaved my legs and sorted out the toenails so that they are fit for public airing. With great hopefulness, you shove your winter woollies in some suitcase or other and shove them under the bed and try to locate those fancy flip flips you bought last September in the sale.*

By the time you read this piece, though, I am willing to bet that it will be snowing, or hailing, or The Village will have been swept away by some sort of freak weather storm.

Because the only thing that seems to be predictable at the moment about the weather is its extreme unpredictability. Actually I’m pretty sure it’s always been a bit like this – but it does seem particularly startling at the moment. It certainly keeps you on your toes. One day last week I swear I put the electric blanket on at bath-time and by the time I was ready for bed I was opening windows and turning on the electric fan.

And then there’s the clothes indecision – not just for me, although that’s bad enough. I have to commit to the appropriate outfit for the day at 7am, which is frankly far too early and then I am caught on playground duty shivering like a plucked whippet in a flimsy cardigan.

But I also have to commit the children to my own inaccurate weather predictions too and this can lead to judging in the playground at home time. Those smart gingham dresses don’t look quite so smart when lashed with driving rain, and anyway where ARE those sunhats and why does every other child seem to have parents who are able to locate sun cream at short notice in early May.

But enough of my inadequacies as a parent, at least until next time – I can’t promise not to wheel them out again, as they are a rich source of humour for all concerned, except possibly the children themselves, although I’m hoping it might be terribly character building. Well on that score only time will tell  – just wait a few years until they turn into stroppy teenagers and they will be able to tell me themselves, pretty confidently and articulately I am guessing, based on current form.

In fact come to think of it, this spring has been like the worst kind of stroppy, hyperbolic adolescent, blowing hot and cold and stomping off to its room when you have just committed yourself to a big barbecue on your back garden. There’s nothing we can do really, with both the narky teenager and this bonkers spring weather, other than wait for it to grow up into nice predictable summer. And we all know what summer means.

That’s right – time to buy that new umbrella you had your eye on. And maybe those cosy bed socks.

 

 

*Don’t bother. They will give you huge blisters, make your feet smell and they will be borderline health and safety hazardous making you trip over in the supermarket car-park when you are trying to push a full trolley and strange children will laugh at you. THAT IS WHY THEY WERE IN THE SALE – DER.

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Spring forward, fall back

It’s a very long time from New Year to Easter, isn’t it? You limp your way through January, trying not to look in the mirror, because then you will be reminded of the havoc that the Christmas season has played on your body.  In the shower you try not to look down at the pasty greyness of midwinter flesh. For the first few days you might even try to diet, although Lord knows how anyone is supposed to get through the darkest days of the year without fat and sugar to help them. If your festive season has been spent at the dark end of Quality Street, then you might even be tempted to detox, although you know it makes you grumpy enough to  give Jeremy Clarkson a run for his money (but without his renowned ‘charm’ and ‘wit’). This never lasts long though, before you start googling ‘why detoxing is a ridiculous waste of time’, with your hand hovering over that last box of Elizabeth Shaw mints even as your other hand is about to press return.

And then you finally make it through January, panting and feeling just a little bit weary of the dark nights and gloomy mornings and then what happens? It turns out to be February for a whole entire month. If anything, February is worse than January, and not only because by February you have for sure finished all the Elizabeth Shaw mints by then. And February also has Valentine’s Day in the middle of it. Now I thought that my days of Valentine’s horror were well and truly over when I got married. No more lurking hopefully by the letterbox, waiting for the red envelope. One guaranteed signed not at all anonymous Valentine’s card, steak and chips for two and all would be well. But this year February 14th heralded a new era of unmatched and unanticipated horror  – watching your child contemplate sending a Valentine, without knowing if the hand-crayoned sentiment will be returned. Well, only another twenty years of that vicarious misery to witness. Thanks cupid. Thanks a lot.

And then in the middle of February we start the season of Lent. For many years I have given up chocolate for Lent – no longer for religious reasons but rather, these day, for reasons of habit. In terms of good habits, this falls somewhere between biting your toenails and eating soil. At the time of writing we are approximately half way through Lent and my Galaxy longings are reaching something of a peak, not helped by walking past approximately thirty stalls of a Chocolate Festival this afternoon. It is about this time in Lent that I begin a somewhat unbiblical dialogue with myself about the precise nature of the ‘chocolate’ that I have given up. Caramac? Milky Bar? Maryland Cookies – those are TINY TINY bits of chocolate! CHIPS! That hardly counts. What about that fake chocolate that they coat Wagon Wheels with? It was this sort of dodgily questioning nature that led me to a career in the law in the first place, but I’m pretty sure that, on balance, Jesus could have resisted any number of Wagon Wheels in the wilderness. So I shall carry on sniffing chocolate candles and fantasising about Crème Eggs until Easter.

Easter! What a glorious word that is. I can hardly wait, and not just because of the Green and Blacks Egg with my name on it. (Literally, with a bold subheading of CHILDREN KEEP OFF.) I love Easter, much better than Christmas. No frantic build up, no overdraft busting conspicuous consumption, no icy journeys in freezing fog and lunatic tailbacks. Just some much needed time off, with the loved ones, daffodils on the verges and the heady promise of spring in the air. And time to anticipate the summer, and thoughts of long sunny days, before the reality of rainy windy August bursts your bubble. Again.

A very Happy Easter to you all, and may the bunny be kind.

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