Let Your Lives Speak

In loving memory of George.
After the 2 minute silence this morning I set off for a walk and hadn't intended heading down here but was thinking of George and the dreadful nightmares he used to have after serving in Korea - he only went in as a cook but because of his astonishingly sharp sight (it would always amaze me how he could see water flowing in streams on the opposite side of the valley in Grasmere) he was drafted as a sniper. I hate the fact that he died alone at Preston Infirmary in a sterile room set aside (not on a ward) for people who had to travel long distance for cancer treatments.

George's father ('Tiny' in the photo) was a veteran of the First World War and I have a Red Cross letter that was written after he was shot giving notification of his return to Grasmere . He also took a band of men to fight in the Spanish Civil War.

It seems obscene that these Grasmere lads ended up in so many theatres of conflict - Russia, Spain, WW1, Korea and Cyprus. They weren't Quakers but given the hideous absurdity and incomprehensibility of it all I felt I wanted to have a trip down here - Fox's Pulpit.
Their lives certainly spoke.

I don't feel my life has much to say and it feels petty in the light of all that I have written to speak of the miserable walk I had, but it was, nonetheless. (Note to self - don't do it again). I thought a walk in a different area would be good but it was a boggy morass by the River Lune along the Dales Way. Then a bridle path sign seemed to direct along by the river but I ended up wedged between an electric fence and a precipitous drop down a slippery bank into the fast flowing Lune. When I retraced my steps a man came out of his house, I thought he was about to have a friendly chat as it was a quiet spot and I was clearly lost, but instead he asked me 'what I thought I was doing down by the river', I made my apologies and headed off on the right path (which I had already obviously found when he decided to pursue me). If I had felt stronger I would have said something but instead headed off quickly before crying. It would normally have brought out the Marxist 'property is theft' in me I don't know why everything feels so miserably difficult these days but it just does, even the simplest of things. I then tried to find a path to get back to the car and the paths around there are not well used so I got hopelessly lost in fading light and scrambled over walls and barbed wire until I found the lane back again .... The walk will have the wrong sort of 'remembrance' and I wondered why I had bothered setting out at all.