Category Archives: folklore and ethnography

Auld Aquaintance – –

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Jack has an excuse this time for being a tad late – again –

I started writing this on the last day of the year and then realized it was the last day of the decade. So I’m in reflective mode –

At the end of another year and another decade, and as I enter my seventy eighth year, I can’t help but think of the friends and family who’ve passed on. The quote below pretty much sums it up –

 

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (June 29, 1900–July 31, 1944)

“Bit by bit… it comes over us that we shall never again hear the laughter of our friend, that this one garden is forever locked against us. And at that moment begins our true mourning, which, though it may not be rending, is yet a little bitter. For nothing, in truth, can replace that companion. Old friends cannot be created out of hand. Nothing can match the treasure of common memories, of trials endured together, of quarrels and reconciliations and generous emotions. It is idle, having planted an acorn in the morning, to expect that afternoon to sit in the shade of the oak.

So life goes on. For years we plant the seed, we feel ourselves rich; and then come other years when time does its work and our plantation is made sparse and thin. One by one, our comrades slip away, deprive us of their shade.”

It’s true and it is the ones that you fell out with and then made up with, even family members that you had awkward relationships with. They’re the ones you end up holding most closely and remembering most dearly.

I’m missing Mum and Dad, Margaret, Roy, Philip, Mike, Davy, Jim, Dominique, Gordeanna, Anne, Maureen, John, Tony – so many.

But happy to have reconnected and newly connected with just as many others who used to hover but have come much closer.

As we enter the roaring twenties again – hang on – – –

Long to Reign Over Us?

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Well – Jack’s a day late and a dollar short – again

I have been watching the Netflix series ‘The Crown’ over the last few nights (with strict instructions from Wendy to not spoil it by swearing!).

Queen-Nazi-Salute-Getty

I should explain that, although I have some admiration for the Queen I have no time at all for the rest of them. I hover somewhere between a Monarch and a President as the figurehead for a democracy and can see the arguments both ways.

But the series does show that the British monarch sits at the top of a privileged establishment pyramid that rules and controls from ‘behind the curtain’, and in my view that’s the problem – always has been and is still.

As for ‘The Crown’?

We’re only part way through, but the most interesting angle for me is the history played out in parallel. The actual domestic stuff is a mixture of truth, gossip, innuendo and guesswork. It’s played well by the actors but in many ways it replays decades of media manipulation by a very hard working establishment.

It’s the stuff around the edge that I find most interesting. The ‘non-political’ Queen connected to lots of political situations. Her weekly audiences with the Prime Minister of the day.

Of course I lived most of my life through all of this – the Suez crisis, the Profumo affair, Churchill, McMillan, Home and Wilson. But I only saw what I was allowed to see! This series is revealing a lot of stuff that was hidden at the time, such as Philip’s link to the Profumo affair and the Nazi connections.

There are some interesting conversations between Elizabeth and Philip around the question – “are you in, or out”. He opted to be in because there was no alternative. The Duke of Windsor tried to get back in, and Princess Margaret opted to stay in, for what seemed to be mostly about the money and the lifestyle.

I will be continuing to watch the series with a mixture of personal memories and a not-so-open mind!