The View from the Hill on Saturday 5th September

Just after the 70th anniversary of the declaration of WW2 we arrive at today, the day which marks the second anniversary of the death of Private Damian Wright, killed in Afghanistan by a roadside bomb. There will be an event held in Mansfield today to raise funds for the memorial at Crich. I had the great honour to lead the celebration of Damian's life and his memory stays with me, and I am thinking about his family today.

The fifth of September is a day I will remember for other reasons to, it is the day 31 years ago, that I left home and moved to live in Lincoln. A day that changed my life forever I suppose.

I have not thought about that day for a long time, but today as I recall Damo Wright I also recall another soldier named Eddie McQuat, our drill instructor and training Sgt for the two years of 1978 to 1980.

Eddie was and for all I know still is, a big imposing Scot, his bark was loud and his bite was ferocious! But Eddie also had another aspect to this gruff personality: he liked to tell stories and he loved an audience and we new recruits became a willing audience. These stories were not about daring do and heroics, they were about comradeship and teamwork and how men worked to support each other and developed a bond closer than family.

It worked on us and the little group of strangers gathered from the four corners of Lincolnshire became good mates. There was a punk rocker, a rockabilly, a new romantic, there was one lad who always overslept, there was one who had a smart answer for everything (no it was not me), the nicknames started from day one. Ian became Chippy, shortened from Chipmunk, because as we drove towards our training base a small plane flew over us and out of the silence he said " was that a chipmunk?". It broke the silence and the ice and we all laughed.

There were some good days ahead of us and some bloody awful days too - some of our number didn't last two years, some still serve but this was the Police not the Army and no matter what we went through we didn't face the dangers that the young men and women face now in Afghanistan.

So the fifth of September is a day to commemorate many things, the day in 1666 that the Great Fire of London was extinguished, the My Lai massacre took place in Vietnam 1969, 1972 Munich Olympic disaster begins, in 1940 Raquel Welch was born, in 1982 Douglas Bader dies, 1997 Mother Teresa dies, the list goes on and on but the link between this date, myself and Damian Wright is now foremost in my mind.

Gordon Brown tells us that this mission is important and it is protecting us all, Damian served loyally and bravely and as I have said on many occasions, I do not question his commitment to the job he was given to do,I just don't think they should be asked to do the job. Damian was part of that band of brothers that Eddie McQuat spoke about with such affection 31 years ago and he remains a part of that band of brothers for all time.



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The View on what to View:

Saturday ....screw the telly, spend time with people you care about.

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The View from the Hill on Friday 4th September

When you hear the circumstances of the terrible events in Edlington, children torturing children, it leaves you dumbfounded.

I don't want to turn into a Daily Mail reader but what has gone wrong?

I don't have the answer of course,and there are so many frightening possibilities, imagine if these two developed their taste for this behaviour later in life and then had the wherewith all to hide their crimes, another Leopold and Loeb in the making.

Children are cruel sometimes and I still believe that our casual attitude to violence in this country does not help them see that a physical response to a situation is not the right response.

We find excuses to justify violence, at sports events, at pop festivals, at marches, in the home and on holiday...but we should start to teach and show children that violence is wrong.

Smacking children is wrong, grabbing and shaking children is wrong...perhaps!?

As I said I don't have the answer but there must be one, we cannot just say they were evil because that is a cop out, that excuses us all from looking deep within ourselves and saying why would they do it, what if that was a member of my family, the victim or the offender?

I suppose what really bothers me is that some will take this awful event and twist it to suit their own ends.

It's just a sad day really, childhood is getting shorter and shorter.

PS

It just dawned on me that I am more likely to have a go at someone for beating their dog than for beating their child.

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The View on what to View:

Friday 9am Sky Movies Classics - Abbott and Costello Meet The Mummy.
Tape it and then have a good laugh later.

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The View from the Hill on Thursday 3rd September

It is officially blustery, in fact let me tell you how blustery it is. As I opened the back door to let the dogs in, I saw a small bear chasing a piglet who was flying at the end of an unravelling scarf. As the bear passed he shouted Happy Wins-day.

You see, it is very blustery.

It reminds me of other blustery days in the past, of an occasion when we lived at Hillgate Farm, North Road, Gedney Hill. It was so windy one night we lost part of the roof and we arrived home not only to find the roof damaged but the front door had been blown in. Inside the house all the farm animals had gathered for safety, the dogs were making sure they didn't make too much mess but needless to say, having thirty seven chickens four pigs and a rabbit in the parlour didn't make for a tidy scene. Luckily, with the roof being party blown away, the wind was keeping the smell to a minimum.

Childhood memories, they are so warm and wonderful and so, now what's the word...unreliable!

I was saying to my blogging sibling only last week, there are gaps in my memory as big as the hole in that roof (which was true) and I do wonder how much we all have to embroider our memories with a little creativity just to seem normal.

Today is the 70th anniversary of the declaration of war and on the news was coverage of the Kinder Transport being re staged, the children now in their 70's and 80's and all being reminded of those far off days, making new friends, reacquainting themselves with people they met only once under such terrible circumstances, but they seem happy to be stirring up those memories.

There is much of the past that is a mystery to me now, perhaps as I grow older I will rediscover those lost memories because it does seem with age comes a degree of forgetting what you had for lunch today but recalling what you had for lunch 70 years ago!

Oh dear God...shoot me now.

Must go, the bear is back at the door, he wants to come in and hide from the woozles.

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The View on what to View:

Thursday ITV1 10:35 Outbreak


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The View from the Hill on Wednesday 2nd September

I got up at 4am this morning desperate for a pee, and two thoughts went through my head; I am getting old and why should I be the only one awake! So I woke Jake up and made him watch as I went to the loo. Well, it's only fair, I had to watch him in the garden the other morning!

Anyway, you know what it's like, once you are awake your head fills with all sorts of rubbish about the day just past and the day fast approaching so I tossed and turned a little before dropping off. When you're laying in your bed, thoughts running through your head....piss off Robbie!

Let me tell you some of the things spinning around in this confused cranium of mine as I await the Sandman.

I have been in touch with the man who wrote the play I want to produce (yes I'm not spectating anymore), he is in Canada and very pleased to help in anyway he can.

I have been casting and directing the piece in my head, imagining all the pros and cons of actors, venues etc.

So that's a good thing really, but then there are the bears. I heard a piece on the radio about cruelty to bears in Asia yesterday, it prompted me to look into it deeper and it is a disgrace, so I have to do something more about that, probably another charity to support along with Born Free, Amnesty International, and the National Deaf Children's Association.

I need to go for a walk: this phrase echoes through my mind at all times of the night and day.

Work issues are always there of course especially when you are preparing to stand up and talk about someone you actually know and then there are my duties as Secretary of the Association of Humanist Celebrants, duties which sometimes drag you down.

Then there are some other positives that I have been sworn to secrecy about, and the need to find Mrs B a new car, my own desire to wrap my arms around an Apple Macintosh computer, family problems of course and then as all that spins through your head you realise you are thirsty...luckily there is a glass of orange squash at my bedside so I have a long drink, sigh, lay my head back on the pillow and start to fall asleep.

Then it hits me...I need to pee again! And so it goes.

Anyway the upshot is I didn't get out of bed until 9am, I have had my scranner eggs on two small pieces of toast (sans butter) and now I am emptying my mind into the blog before I start work on what is left of the day.

Thanks for being there, I mean it most sincerely.


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The View on what to View:

Wednesday ITV3 at 9pm - Numb3rs

The View from the Hill on Tuesday 1st September

And at about 4.15am Mrs B managed to get me with pinch punch, a weak effort but enough to claim the bragging rights for the month of September.

Nothing much in the world to take a View on at the moment, the Jacko thing rumbles on, wild fires in Los Angeles but the Governator is on the job, the usual coverage of tragic crime in the UK and a glut of special programmes to commemorate the start of WW2.

Seventy years on and we still have soldiers overseas being killed for reasons we don't really understand.

I think it was all encapsulated very nicely yesterday in an interview I heard with Dame Vera Lynn, 92 years old and back in the Top Twenty with her Greatest Hits. She spoke about those days seventy years ago and the way a country pulled together, all united in the effort to repel the potential invasion and to fight to keep the Nazi from our door, but she couldn't see why our boys were now on the other side of the world fighting for another country, her inference seemed to be that why don't they fight for themselves as we did!

I sort of agree with her, and as you know I think going to war over a religious ideal is foolish because you just can't win.

More soldiers were killed over the last few days and my concern now is that we might start to get complacent about it and stop caring, that would be a mistake.

We might not lose a generation of young men as they did in WW1, we might not lose as many as we did seventy years ago, but losing as many as we are doing in this day and age seems a terrible waste.

So, I'm with Dame Vera. Bring them home.

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The View on what to View:

Tuesday 9pm BBC2 - The Choir:Unsung Town (just edges the new Jamie Oliver)

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The View from the Hill on Monday 31st August

One of the things about the Internet and social networking is that information flows so freely and quickly these days, it is not easy to keep a secret anymore.

Another aspect is the empowerment of the ordinary man in the street, we can now start petitions on the web, circulate them via Facebook or e mail and soon have quite a few signatures to support whatever it is that bugs us.

I have signed petitions about our troops in Afghanistan and about many other things but I used to sign them without thinking really and now I have started thinking about a request that arrived this morning. Sign the petition that stops the killers of Baby P from getting new identities.

I'm not going to sign.

You see I don't care if they get new identities, I don't care where they live, I don't care if they come and stop in the street I live in, although I would recognise them I'm sure , those ugly piggy features are hard to forget.

No, I want to sign the petition that states that child killers who are not in prison should wear electronic tags for the rest of their lives and be monitored 24 hours a day and should never be allowed to be anywhere near a child as long as they live, now that would be a good petition.

You see unlike the Americans who want child sex offenders to be known to the public so we watch them, I think this is the job of the probation service and other agencies that our taxes pay for. In America if a convicted child sex offender moves into a neighbourhood he or she has to tell their neighbours and all of a sudden life changes for all of them. They start to live in real fear, their children become the ones who are monitored 24 hours a day and the fear of the parents seeps into the children and they feel unsafe in their own street. That's not fair to them, being punished in a way for the acts of others.

I think children should be free of this fear which is why the street need not know, as long as the authorities know and watch and check and monitor as closely as humanly possible.

You might agree or disagree, either way I won't start a petition.

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The View on what to View:

Monday BBC2 11pm - Kill Bill V1.


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The View from the Hill on Sunday 30th August

It was 6am this morning that Jake's rumbling tummy got the better of him and he forced me out of bed so he could go and eat grass. He then persuaded me that actually he needed a more substantial meal so I fed him and he went back to sleep. I was now wide awake. Thanks Jake.

For many years I worked shifts and this meant sleeping in the day time which comes with it's own set of difficulties. I remember one occasion laying in bed trying to sleep through the noise of the day and eventually dropping off only to be awoken by the constant knocking on the front door and the bell ringing...I jumped out of bed thinking this must be urgent. On opening the door in my pyjamas (Groucho Mark aficionados need not worry) I was greeted by the obligatory Jehovah's Witnesses.

"Why are you banging on my door, couldn't you see the curtains were closed?" I said and the response was, "we thought you'd overslept and didn't want you to get into trouble!" What a lovely christian act I thought as I slammed the door.

My relationship with the JW's has moved on since those days, I now have two tame JW's who come to the door every couple of weeks, they bring me the two magazines full of strange articles and religious text and we chat about the state of the world, and we agree about an awful lot.

We spend ages on the doorstep nodding and sagely putting the world to rights, me and Sandra and Janet, the JW's and the atheist. I always scan through the magazines because occasionally you find little gems of wisdom especially on relationships,with your partner and with god.

They know I'm a evolutionist not a creationist but every time they come I drop just the merest hint that I might be thinking about the existence of a supreme being (not Diana Ross) and they fly away happy, I still have a smile on my face and I know they will return to their church and be able to look their god in the face and say, "we are making progress god, we think he's turning!"

I think this christian act is the least I can do as they are out in all weathers on the doorstep, trying to spread the word, and the day that some of their number disturbed my sleep has long since stopped colouring my attitude toward these hardy beasts who brave the streets with gods word. I see it as feeding the birds, just a little to keep them coming back but not enough to satisfy their hunger.

Anyway, Jake is now snoring behind me, everyone else in the house is asleep and I must do some work but on this Sunday spare a thought for the hordes of JW's, wandering the streets looking for just a tit bit of hope that their efforts are not in vain.

And now hymn 425...The Lord is my Sheepdog, I shall not think.


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The View on what to View:

Sunday 1.15pm BBC2 - Guess Who's Coming To Dinner

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