Lest We Forget and a Jar of Onions

Hi Everyone

This week has been a special week when we remember the servicemen and women who served and died in all the wars since the First World War.  The Junior Partner - my dad - spent his eighteenth birthday in the trenches of Northern France. A few years ago, I went with our son and a friend to follow his journey through Northern France in the last months of the war. It was an emotional journey, especially when you pass the huge cemeteries that dot the landscape with thousands of names recorded there. He talked very little about his time there except to say that he had seen many terrible things and that an older soldier who took him under his wing saved his life on two occasions. He obviously survived, unlike many others, otherwise you would not be enduring this Rubbish every week. At the Remembrance service broadcast by the BBC from the Royal Albert Hall every year, the emphasis this year was shifted to the wars and conflicts in more recent years: the Falklands, Bosnia, Kosova, Iraq, and Afghanistan. What it brought into sharp focus was the many families with young children whose lives are devastated and changed forever by the loss of one or other of their parents. The Main Contractor was born just before the start of the Second World War in 1939. Her dad was called up for army service in 1943 when she was just 4 years old. He was a dispatch rider and found himself in Italy during one of the worst winters on record. He suffered a severe leg wound at Monte Cassino just four days before the Allied forces broke through to liberate Rome. He spent three months in hospital in Rome before spending another two months in hospital in England before returning home to his family. That story has a happy ending of course, but many other children have and are growing up never having known their dads and mums. In the next days and weeks, sadly, more families around the world will suffer the same experience due to just a few power crazy maniacs.

The Senior Partner’s war contribution was feeding the local people with jars of pickled onions and red cabbage. While the Junior Partner and I were sitting in the draughty living room with five small pieces of coal in the fireplace, listening to heavyweight boxer Joe Louis winning his latest world championship fight on the radio, she was peeling small onions and slicing red cabbages before soaking them in vinegar and filling the rows of 2lb jars. All the ingredients came out of the shop, so she regarded the contents of the jars as 100% profit. I said that she was feeding the local people but at the usual premium prices, of course, as she squirrelled the profits away, no doubt evading the clutches of the tax inspector. The Junior Partner was a volunteer in the Air Raid Patrol, making sure that everywhere was blacked out from any German bombers overhead. Fortunately, the Germans were more interested in our steelworks and machinery manufacturing factories rather than smashing cups, saucers and plates so he had a less traumatic experience than in 1918,

This week we were again warned that we are far too reliant on the internet and all its technology. Back in the day, I would be managing four or five building contracts. Nearly every day I would need to contact someone from site to order materials or seek advice. The nearest red phone box and a bag of ten pence pieces usually solved the problem. Now we have no public phone boxes, and we are an almost cashless society. That's progress folks. 

Just a Thought:

They told him his mission required total silence, so he handed them a spanner telling them to explain that to a 500CC side valve engine.

Eating a pickled onion at lunchtime is the quickest way to clear your afternoon schedule.

Man waiting outside a phone box: “Excuse me, you have been on the phone for twenty minutes, and you haven’t said a word. Man inside: “That's because I am speaking to my wife”.

Brian