Wombling free
Well, where have I been? Having never been to a civil Remembrance day ceremony, I decided to do the Worthing one.
I checked the website which said it started at 11 with the silence, followed by a march-past of local uniformed organisations. I thought this a little eccentric, so turned up about a quarter of an hour early to find about two to three hundred people there, scattered across Chapel Rd, which might be a bit of a challenge for the mach-past.
A band was providing music on a sporadic basis, and at about five to the hour they ended Nimrod and there was a pause in proceedings.
Well, I realised that the tannoy system must be faulty when at two minutes to the hour, a solo bugler sounded the last post. There had to have been some speech before that ("They shall not grow old..."). It was all the more obvious that things were not quite as they should be when, at 11am, with the maroon gone bang and the Town Hall bell chiming the hour the bugler was already halfway through sounding Reveille. Only this time it was coming faintly over the speakers as well. That was the last we heard over them, and for the next 10 minutes the band played Abide With Me (caught my throat a little, last had that at Dad's funeral) and another hymn, with generous silences between.
I really could not see the point of staying to ceremonial I couldn't hear and to which there was no printed guide. So I left.
I was pleased to briefly see Paul Campbell who was, until earlier this year, the Worthing auctioneer, and very kind he was just after Dad's death.
And last week, I went back to the Friends Meeting House in Mill Road, after an absence of over a year, and was touched by the friendly welcome. Quaker worship is such a refreshing change. No sermons, especially those where, although all that needed to be said has already been said, they say it again because you can't not preach for 15 minutes.
And now something completely off-topic: some people who think they know me seem to regard me as unpatriotic, and rabidly pro-European. Well, since 1982 I have not bought, eaten, or drunk anything Argentinian (wine, stewed steak etc) and in the early 1990s I stopped buying French goods because they were burning lorries of British lamb. That was when I discovered Somerset Camembert, and better it is than the original, except the original has now got Appelation controllée status and I can't find it anywhere. The boycott of French goods has lapsed, but not those of Argentina, because they still lay claim to the Falklands and rattle their sabres whenever they need to divert attention away from their own problems.
If more British "patriots" stopped buying goods made in countries they say they abhor, and stopped waving Union flags, and stopped protesting about immigration, they might even have some effect. I do not do jingoism. Nor racism. I think that, without proposing any remotely sensible alternative market for our goods, the rabid Europhobes must be in this for some other motive, probably economic or political.
I checked the website which said it started at 11 with the silence, followed by a march-past of local uniformed organisations. I thought this a little eccentric, so turned up about a quarter of an hour early to find about two to three hundred people there, scattered across Chapel Rd, which might be a bit of a challenge for the mach-past.
A band was providing music on a sporadic basis, and at about five to the hour they ended Nimrod and there was a pause in proceedings.
Well, I realised that the tannoy system must be faulty when at two minutes to the hour, a solo bugler sounded the last post. There had to have been some speech before that ("They shall not grow old..."). It was all the more obvious that things were not quite as they should be when, at 11am, with the maroon gone bang and the Town Hall bell chiming the hour the bugler was already halfway through sounding Reveille. Only this time it was coming faintly over the speakers as well. That was the last we heard over them, and for the next 10 minutes the band played Abide With Me (caught my throat a little, last had that at Dad's funeral) and another hymn, with generous silences between.
I really could not see the point of staying to ceremonial I couldn't hear and to which there was no printed guide. So I left.
I was pleased to briefly see Paul Campbell who was, until earlier this year, the Worthing auctioneer, and very kind he was just after Dad's death.
And last week, I went back to the Friends Meeting House in Mill Road, after an absence of over a year, and was touched by the friendly welcome. Quaker worship is such a refreshing change. No sermons, especially those where, although all that needed to be said has already been said, they say it again because you can't not preach for 15 minutes.
And now something completely off-topic: some people who think they know me seem to regard me as unpatriotic, and rabidly pro-European. Well, since 1982 I have not bought, eaten, or drunk anything Argentinian (wine, stewed steak etc) and in the early 1990s I stopped buying French goods because they were burning lorries of British lamb. That was when I discovered Somerset Camembert, and better it is than the original, except the original has now got Appelation controllée status and I can't find it anywhere. The boycott of French goods has lapsed, but not those of Argentina, because they still lay claim to the Falklands and rattle their sabres whenever they need to divert attention away from their own problems.
If more British "patriots" stopped buying goods made in countries they say they abhor, and stopped waving Union flags, and stopped protesting about immigration, they might even have some effect. I do not do jingoism. Nor racism. I think that, without proposing any remotely sensible alternative market for our goods, the rabid Europhobes must be in this for some other motive, probably economic or political.
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