Examining memory

I'm writing this at midnight in what feels like a sudden chill, although my Apple watch says it's 11ºC outside. It felt balmy and quiet, in a greyish fashion, this morning when I left the house for my painting class, but by the time I was walking home again two hours later there was a wind and though that's dropped again ... it's cold. Winter duvet soon, I think.

Art class was peaceful as I was the only pupil today, although I seem to have achieved very little on the small-scale watercolour I'm working on - I spent an age trying to get the colour of the road right. I need to practise more the technique of dragging paint from a first firm application to give a more transparent effect. While I was walking to class, I tried to phone various people with information; it's very frustrating when people don't answer, but I guess they're not all as attached to their phone as I am.

When I got in, I had a phone chat with #1 son on the back of which I've arranged for the pair of us to take a weekend off next month and go to Edinburgh for a chance to see the boys play football (or, terrifyingly, rugby). What with our missed holidays, we seem to have been on weekend duty here all year since Christmas. 

For some reason I've been filled recently with the need to investigate the origins of what I think of as my inherited world view. I dug out my childhood stamp album for some clues, which I've included in the collage above. Two things stand out for me: the fascinating series of stamps from Germany - before WW2, when inflation meant overprinting stamps with insanely high numbers, and during Hitler's regime; it seems odd to have his face on a stamp. And then there was the stamps from the land that was called Palestine, with the footnote about the creation of a new Palestinian state of Israel. We certainly talked about Palestine when I was a child, because my father had spent some time there in the war. And do you remember The Gold Coast? Fascinating. 

Tonight we had choir, practising a lovely piece by John Rutter commemorating the nuclear catastrophe after the tsunami in Japan as well as one piece I used to sing when my sons were in the church choir along with me (except that I was the only alto in a sea of trebles, along with one tenor and Himself on bass.) We sang quite well, I think - though I need to find time to do a bit of  work on my voice again. 

I've just watched back to back two programmes about the Brighton bombing - I presume this is the anniversary. I took my boys to visit my sister in England that day - I remember listening to the unfolding story on the radio before going for the train. All these half-remembered faces ...