Comment:

"The life that I have is all that I have...."

It means many different things to many different people. 

To me in my comfortable home it is about how I get though tomorrow to put food on the table and keep the flat warm. I do not have to deal with the fact that a drone may hit a car passing my house and blow up me and my neighbours.

I know that I can get on a bus with a female friend and get from point 'A' to 'B' without too much molestation. I also know that I can make this blog with almost impunity. I self Censor how I make comment. I would not cause offense intentionally nor would I aim to hurt the feelings of another person. 

I am male, white, gay and Catholic. I have enough on my shoulders to ever try to give shit to anyone else!

It is difficult for me to understand that I am now nearly 50 years of age, but it puts me into a position where I can look back and look forward too.

When I was young, the Second World War was still very much in peoples minds. I played in bomb craters and had my uncle Davy telling me 'War stories' that I never believed. I was also surrounded by men and women that had endured the First World War.

I am now sorry that I did not ask the pertinent questions. These people that had first hand experience of 'The War to end all Wars' or it's consequential inevitability that was the Second World War. I am trying to make the links and trying to find out now. 

My parents were not involved in the fighting. My Father came from the Republic of Ireland and my mother was a child, but her eldest brother was in the Chindits. He inspired and still inspires me now. His stories that we never believed. The Maggots he used to heal wounds or the grass to sew together others. This from a man who was a medic throughout Burma and Indo-China during WWII. 

As an uncle, he taught me in the hot summer of 1977 or 1978 how the base of a bottle could create a fire in the local forests in Wales, by the light of the Sun being condensed through it's base. A lesson I have never forgotten. But I did not believe his other teachings and stories that he gave us.

We now know that a maggot can be therapeutic. I thought he was just grossing me out!! He was a great story teller!!!!!!!!

I think that he saw so much in his life but he would be horrified by what is happening now. He had great respect for Mother Theresa (although not a particularly religious man) because of the appalling and degrading sights that he saw in "The Black Hole of Calcutta' in the 40's. How would he cope with the world and how we deal with humanity today?

I put my own emphasis on what I believe he believed, but did he really believe in a world where a young girl would be shot in the head for believing that education should be freely accessible to all, or a world where Palestine would not be free? 

I have not seen what he saw nor endured what he endured (nor would I want to), but did not these men and women fight for our freedom? 

Maybe we have taken the interpretation much further than they could ever have anticipated, but we have a freedom where we have to look back to WWI and WWII to really appreciate where it came from. Bugger Magnacarta or any other great treaties, if we had been invaded and subjugated as a nation, we would not have the freedom as a people that we have today.

I am Catholic and Irish and it is as true for our nation as it is true for Britain. 

My uncle Davy did not just save England, he gave the ability for all of us to find freedom and challenge the status quo!

I Facebooked his daughter today and remembered a an unsung hero. Hence this post.