Monday 20 June 2011

Bang, bang, you're dead

This was the scene from our bedroom window yesterday afternoon on the station platform beside our house. The local steam railway society holds an annual 1940s weekend, by which they actually mean a World War II weekend. It delivers to my windowsill the happy sight of clipped gentlemen in army uniform standing tall beside more relaxed visitors in 21st century leisurewear. And the oddity of people flocking to our quiet village to wallow in nostalgia for a time when we were all full of fear and when people died horribly.

(And sang cheerful songs, and met lovers, and discovered they could do far more than they realised, and developed great friendships, of course. I know all of this. I just find it strange that so many people, for the most part too young to remember the war, like to celebrate it.)

It also gives some very weird people the chance to march up and down the platform wielding a trunchion, presumably in case the dancers get a bit frisky, or someone forgets it's all make-believe and starts actually letting off bombs and firing guns. What he'd do if he met a German, I've no idea. Arrest them for being a spy?
The worst bit for us is that the noise is relentless - jolly music, sirens, explosions, gunshots ... And at lunchtime on Saturday a Lancaster bomber flies past, right over our garden, very low. It happens every year, and every year that low droning engine noise shudders over my head, I'm filled with a visceral terror. I've no idea why - I've never been in a war, so it's not digging up old memories.

It's all gone now, bar the bunting - that'll do for the Summer Evening and Wine Special next weekend.

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