But that's not
How she sang it.
It was a song from the war after the one we remember
Having joined a hundred years ago today,
A song from the war fought by men whose fathers, uncles and
Elder brothers had fought the War To End All Wars,
Men who were under no illusions as to their likely fate.
But that's not
How she sang it.
______
______
The morning of Pride came to me slowly and slightly after noon.
An Eve of Pride Party had come to me hard and fast
Staying with me till some way after dawn.
It was fully light and already warm
When I fell to sleep beneath
The open window at the bed end
Of my just over bed-wide flat.
I slept soundly but only until the parade approached,
The crowd's enthusiasm rising and reaching its crescendo
As it passed along the road not seventy yards from where I lay.
______
My father, by now in generous old age,
Had been admitted to hospital a week before.
There an emergency tracheotomy had suddenly denied him
Both speech and the ability to feed except by tube for life.
______
I feel duty bound to experience the magical day
As proof of its existence and to have something to say
When I hospital visit my father, still twenty-four hours away.
______
I am hanging, a little stoned, it feels early and my mind is racing
At the finality of my father's situation and how desperately frustrating
And unsatisfying the remainder of his time will be, however long or short.
All the while I am making my way, against the flow of the crowd, toward the
Headspace I know I will find when I reach the sea and look out over what man
Has not since the dawn of time worked out how to colonise and fuck up like land.
It is my father's life that flashes through my mind while I dodge and weave through an
Oncoming shoal of unsubtly smuggled budgies and booty-shorts that shimmer in the sun.
I am not ashamed that I have tears on my cheeks at a carnival to celebrate the diversity of life.
______
I am head-wrestling my self.
It hurts as my emotions struggle
To take and hold my imagination,
Flitting as it always does between
Extremes of pleasure and of pain.
There is nothing more important in my world
Than my father lying uncomfortably in hospital.
I am today his eyes, his ears, his experience of
The world outside a sterile, single bedded room.
I cannot lie to him when I download as best I can my bedside head to his
So it is my bounden duty to make the truth of the day as entertaining as I can.
______
I have by now escaped the crowd and stand, battered sausage in hand, by the sea.
One pound and twenty pence invested in making a true story a little lighter to listen to.
My eyes are red with both tears and tiredness and the rings beneath are as puffy as puffy can be.
I am on my second convenience-store handy-pack of tissues as I now almost ignore the waves of
Sadness at projected imaginings of a time yet to be in a place or places unknown crashing against the rock
That is the reality of now, today, and all the days that have gone before to enable this one to be what it is.
______
I feel safe to lean against the railings above the beach
To look back at the land, to see how little has changed,
Then I think of the day and how much is very different.
I am hungry but can't face another battered sausage joke
So start walking back along the Promenade toward the pier.
I am thinking out now, looking around me, listening for detail
I can use to distract from my father's woes and maybe, just
Maybe, put a smile on his face when I see him tomorrow.
Three chrome-laden-Harley-boys rock up to the posing park,
Remove their helmets and as I pass by I hear them laughing,
About their bingo-wings billowing at speed on the motorway.
It’s the price of high bars and sleeveless vests and waistcoats
For all but the most Easy Rider scrawny of Peter Fonda wannabes.
______
Me, I like my arms.
They are not the finest, magazine grade
You might ever see
But you'd probably agree
They look right
With an all-over covering of skin
And that does it for me
______
I wear sleeves when I ride my bike
So as not to have to when I don't.
______
It's early evening and I am calm when I return to my one-bed wide flat.
My thoughts are still volatile but I have become used to cerebral bangs
And flashes of all the things I know not to write down in the moment.
I am not in the mood for an After-Pride Party but I will make the effort
Because that is what I have planned to do and I can't report back that I
Stayed in because I was miserable that one day soon my dad will die.
I shaved and showered, probably shat,
Making full use of all the facilities in the flat
I cooked myself something my father never would
Because he loved his son.
I never cared so much for me as did he.
I dressed and I walked the short road to the club
Where I drank and I smoked and danced to rub-a-dub dub.
It was long after dawn when I climbed into bed and
Set my alarm to leave just enough time to drive
Fifty miles into a summer Sunday afternoon.
To do my best at shutting out the shit
Of the whole sorry circumstance
And to ignore my yesterday
Insofar as I had mourned
The passing of much
Of what my
Father
Was
Yet
He was
Still there,
Albeit fragile.
______
I told my tale jokily
And raised a smile or two.
It was too soon to explain what I wanted,
That what I had witnessed the day before
With my own eyes, however blearily it was
And through however many tears of either
Sadness or of celebration, was proof positive
That he and his father had not lived in vain.
It isn't that they fought battles and won.
Instead, they demonstrated
How to do peace.
______
______
That is the key.
It's impossible to impose peace.
People have to notice how others achieve it.
If they amend their behaviour to match they achieve it, too.
It isn't about militarily suppressing revolt, anyone with firepower can do that.
Nor about scaring gullibles into brainwashed accord with outdated "divine" instruction manuals.
The best thing we can do to help those at war in far off lands is to keep doing exactly what we peacefully do.
Eventually they might notice, give it a go and discover how much easier peace is than war. If not it is their own loss.
______
______
It's not my job to save the world.
But if everyone behaved like me
There would be no religion or war.
Just saying.
_____
The song I heard the little girl sing was from my father's war.
It was his generation that wanted luck wished them
When their loved ones waved them goodbye.
______
My father was one of the very lucky ones,
He came home at the end of the war.
Having sung that song himself with
Friends and fellows who didn't,
A good few years before.
He will have sung it since in memory
Of those who were less lucky than he,
The chorus rising and rousing but empty
From those living in defiance for the dead.
But that's not
How she sang it.
The little girl sang the lyric with innocent enthusiasm,
With the broadest and happiest of smiles
She stripped it of all connotations,
She deleted its history files.
______
I wish my father had lived to hear it sung that way, too,
And that he had witnessed also Pride in Seaside City.
______
It is a hundred years since we entered the Great War
And nearly seventy since we emerged from the Second.
We have come a long way since Europe last fought.
A lot is said for the men, women and children who died.
Not enough is said for those who survived,
For those who made the changes
That enable us to enjoy
Our freedoms
Today,
That enable small children
To grow up here in peace
And in happiness
Without experience
Or knowledge of war.
Because that
Is how the little girl sang it
And because that
Made it special to hear.
