Tag: WW1

The eleventh hour

18 June 2022

At the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, the Allies and Germans signed an armistice. It didn’t officially end the Great War, but it was the beginning of the end. The armistice expired after thirty-six days and was extended several times before the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on 28 June 1919 brought lasting peace. Each year, on the day the guns fell silent, we stop, remember our war dead and lay wreaths of poppies to recall the flowers that sprang up in the fields where the soldiers fell.

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Birthdays, bees and blossoms (plus a few graves)

Happy Birthday Southampton parkrun

Saturday 2 July 2022 was Southampton parkrun’s 10th birthday. Sadly, event number 448 did not have the brightest, sunniest weather. The wind was whistling across the flats so much the balloons wouldn’t stay still for my photographs, and looking at the clouds, I couldn’t help wondering if we would all stay dry. The possibility of getting wet didn’t appear to have deterred the runners. As the magic hour of nine o’clock approached, more and more people arrived, and the Common began to fill with lots of smiling faces. Soon the crowds began to gather at the start line.

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Just a tease

If Mary could see him now, stirring his underwear in a bubbling dixie of petrol-tainted water, she’d laugh her head off. It was a far cry from any kind of laundry she knew, with no soap or mangle and a metal tin precariously perched over four stubby candles in the dark instead of the copper boiler she used at home. That he was attempting the task at all would have amused her, but it wasn’t something he could add to the letter he was trying to write. For a start, he wouldn’t want to mention the bayonet he was using to stir the pot, or the lice he was trying to kill. She didn’t need to be worrying about that kind of thing. The trouble was it was difficult to find anything to write about that wouldn’t make her worry. One way or another, even the most innocuous things tended to end up running to horror, and every letter he wrote could so easily be his last. 

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