LUNCH BY THE MEMORIAL

I’m eating my lunch by the war memorial. In towns and villages all across the country there are similar monuments - usually small, stone-stepped pillars, always adorned with a cross, and the names of ordinary, local men, who fought in World War I, and never came home.

I’m finding it poignant today. I’m not even sure why. It’s always a tangible link to our past, to our great grandparents and great great grandparents, who lived through that terrible time. Plastic wreaths of poppies still adorn the cold stone, laid there every November to bind the link in the act of remembrance.

That post-Edwardian world seems so far away from where we are now, so far removed. I find myself wondering who Champion S. and Chapman H.R were. Did they serve alongside Collins A.H. and Baker H.J? How did they die? And where? And what would they make of the world they paid for? What would they think of the village today, with its estate agents, its bustling Costa, its Cats Protection League, and (just behind the memorial) the Istanbul Mangal?

Not only that but the mess the world is in. It’s a million miles from the sleepy village.

I’ve never been in the Istanbul Mangal. What even is a Mangal? I thought it was a thing people used to squeeze their laundry through - rather than the authentic taste of (I guess) Turkey. That would have baffled FS and FW Chandler.

All I can calculate really is that I miss home. I miss those tangible links to the past, to the safety and security of family and home, and a place where I can feel like myself. I’d like it, in fact, I’d love it, if I had some sort of end date, to know when we’re moving, when we can go home to a quiet life of the usual, the normal, the predictable and the safe.

But then, of course, so did these men.