Yesterday on Whitehall the memorial service for war dead took place. It is held each year at the Cenotaph on the nearest Sunday to 11th November, the date in 1918 when the First World War ended.

Why at the Cenotaph? It’s because of what a cenotaph is – an empty tomb that honours those whose remains are buried elsewhere or were never recovered.

Those dead are buried in cemeteries from Belgium to Rangoon. And some aren’t buried anywhere – blown up, vaporised, nothing left.

The service was held in the morning but I went in the afternoon, walking from Westminster Tube Station, along Whitehall, the road that leads from Parliament to Trafalgar Square. I stopped at the Cenotaph and took some pictures. A public address system with a loudspeaker hung from cables on one of the buildings told people they could make their way to the Cenotaph if they wished. It kept giving out the message, which was slightly surreal given that people were already there and didn’t need a recorded message to tell them they could do so.

Then a line of people walked up carrying big Union Jack flags and one by one came forward to add a wreath to those at the Cenotaph.

I wondered about the recent and continuing controversy over people hanging Union Jack flags on their properties or on lampposts or public buildings and being seen by Councils and the police as provocative anti-immigration Far Right supporters. At the same time they are seen by others as middle-of-the-road normal people showing pride in an England that in their eyes is disappearing.

This is especially sensitive given the protest marches by pro-Palestinian supporters holding and waving Palestine flags, who are not stopped or complained about.

Commenters have said that the two-tier policing is a reflection of reluctance to anger immigrant communities because of their voluble reaction, as evidenced from past occasions.

And then as I walked towards Trafalgar Square, I saw a small group holding Union Jacks and one man holding a pieced-together Ukrainian and British flag.

I remember being in the States before and after 9/11 and the huge number of flags that were everywhere – in front gardens, on shop fronts – everywhere.

Pubs

Before today I never really thought about the pubs on Whitehall. The very fact they are there, in the heart of London on a street filled with Government and Crown buildings, says a lot about Britain. There are four pubs directly on Whitehall – seven if you count those just a few feet down side streets leading off Whitehall.

I noticed them today because of the ex-soldiers with their medals, standing and talking outside the pubs.

And how well I saw the man standing on his own amidst the people standing there outside The Red Lion.

Pagecord

Pagecord is a blogging platform, not unlike WordPress.com. It’s one of the blogging platforms I wrote about a while ago under the title Write This Way Or That Way.

As of 1 November, new potential sign-ups to the free version of Pagecord have to be invited. Previously, anyone could sign up, but according to the site owner, the site has had a lot a spammers signing up so they could use the Pagecord as a stepping stone to get viewers to come to a site they host elsewhere. If I were on the receiving end of that I wouldn’t like it: No one likes being used.

Anyone with a premium account has codes to give out to people they know so that person can use the invitation to get access.

Well, I joined and had a free account and then a paid account before all this blew up, and very early on, at the beginning when Olly built the site.

He has taken a lot of stick for using AI for some of the coding. It’s hard to please everyone. 

I happen to like Pagecord and I can’t see me getting annoyed over how the site was constructed when I would not be able to do that work myself. People are funny. Well, not funny really. They just love to get offended.

I was wondering about the progress of mankind. People are more individual than they used to be. That is probably in line with the move away from tight, rural communities. In the city, people have their antennae out because they don’t know who is around them. Nearly everyone is a stranger, and that turns a person into a stranger too.

So I was wondering whether we are all snowflakes now, hypersensitive when there is no need, or whether we have actually become more sensitive and that is a good thing – or at least not a negative thing – because we are all tuned in more to each other?

Cambridge Botanical Garden

The photos here are from a visit to the Botanic Garden in Cambridge that I visited with a friend this past week. It’s November and the leaves are still on the trees. A magnolia had large buds on it. What are they going to do? Will they hang on until the Earth turns? Will they be nipped in the bud if there is a cold spell? Are we feeling a bit discombobulated because the planet it not behaving in the regular way we like, and are we reading into this the early signs of the coming age of a catastrophe?

As with my last post, the photo here is from a visit to the Botanic Garden in Cambridge that I visited with a friend this past week. It’s November and the leaves are still on the trees. A magnolia had large buds on it. What are they going to do? Will they hang on until the Earth turns? Will they be nipped in the bud if there is a cold spell? Are we feeling a bit discombobulated because the planet it not behaving in the regular way we like, and are we reading into this the early signs of the coming age of a catastrophe?

Can We Be Consciously Integrated

I came across a review of a book that mentioned a person who was described as a cultural theorist.

His name is Paul Willis (born 1 April 1945 in Wolverhampton, England) and he is described as having spent his life working as a sociologist, ethnographer, and professor (Keele and Princeton Universities.)

He says this

“We are most deeply embedded in our culture when we are at our most natural and spontaneous… as soon as we think, as soon as we see our life as parts in a play, we are in a very important sense, already, one step away from our real and living culture”

So when a person is not in the culture but removed from it, where is he? I am tempted to say that a man does not rescue himself from imprisonment, but that is getting ahead of myself. But I am saying it because otherwise I might go on a different track and lose my own position, or what position I have to the extent that I have it.

To continue – when a person is ‘one step away from our real and living culture’ – what and where is he?

Can he ever go back to be unconsciously in the experience? I think not.

Can he, can we, go back to be consciously – as opposed to unconsciously – in the experience? And if so, what is that state of being?

Are we all destined for this?

A stretch of Oxford Street is now pedestrianised. People were walking up and down, mostly on the pavements. The man with the signboard had the middle of the street pretty much to himself.

I guess we need training before we spread all over the street. It reminds me of a man who kept a chicken farm. Most of his chickens roosted in a big barn, but a few roosted in an ark. An ark is a moveable barn on wheels.

So on this particular occasion the farmer moved the ark from where it had been standing for months. And when the chicken came to roost that evening, they went to where the ark was and not where it was now. They folded their legs under themselves to roost and sat on the grass as though sitting on roosting poles.

The biggest surprise were the bollards and barriers that interrupted the sweep of the traffic-free stretch of street that I had imagined.

Two of the ambassadors (helpfully dressed in pink) explained that the changes were being done in stages, so eventually, they said, the obstructions will be gone.

Of course, the biggest change is that all the bus routes have had to be changed to run along adjoining streets.

If you want to be entertained, as any taxi driver what he thinks of the changes.

Outside Kew Gardens Tube Station on the road that leads to Kew Gardens, there is a distinct feeling that a person has stepped back in time a few decades. Long may the ambiance continue because as we all see, the tendency is for all shopping areas to begin to look like each other.