Time to remember

 

DAY TWENTY-EIGHT: Thursday 28^th January 2021:

WARNING to those who read Dave’s Diary – The diary nobody reads !  Today’s edition is going to be long, long but I hope within all the words I here put into order will create something powerful.

Yesterday was Holocaust Memorial Day. All very well and good, the evil that murdered six million people needs to be remembered but are we remembering the people or are we remembering the evil ? Today all these years later we do not know who the people are, we do not know anyone who knew anyone who died. YES, remember what happened but it is impossible to celebrate the lives of those who lost their lives.

Ann Frank, The Diary of Ann Frank. Could you right now close your eyes and allow the image of Ann Frank to fill your mind ?  Do you know what she looked like ? If she were still alive she would be ninety-two. She died at the age of sixteen. Have you read her diary ?  Do schools still use Ann Frank’s Diary ?  I have been to Ann Franks House in Amsterdam, Holland. It is a museum. Museums do history and to quote Henry Ford History is Bunk !  It is. I have no time for history, I do heritage. History is bunk while heritage is the foundation stone upon which to build modern-day society. The house is history but the diary is heritage.

One thing about the house which I did find special. In the doorway inside the house there were pencil marks on the side of the frame where Ann’s parents had marked her height as she grew up.

If you look at a photograph of Ann Frank, any photograph, she is SMILING. Yes, of course these were all taken before she entered the horrors of the Holocaust but that SMILE I would suggest tells us about the real Ann and who she was. Ann Frank, one real person we can remember on Holocaust Memorial Day.

That brings us nicely to SMILE OF THE DAY:

Once a wise man was asked what is the meaning of life ? He replied ….. Life itself has no meaning, Life is an opportunity to create a meaning.

We are coming to the end of January, when we get to November we will celebrate Remembrance Day and Armistice Sunday. Something I coined to use each November: They gave their young lives so we could live our old lives.

One of the celebrated World War One poets was against the erection in the 1920’s of memorial stones. He said that those who had died should not be remembered by names carved in stone but within peoples’ hearts. That was all well and good in the 1920’s when people were alive who knew those who had given their young lives but today we need the memorial stones to tell us who they were.

In the story I am writing THE SECRET DIARY OF AN OLD MAN AGED THIRTEEN AND THREE QUARTERS I tell of the roll of honour within the assembly hall at the school I attended. Not once during all the assemblies over five years, assemblies I attended was the attention of we teenagers drawn to the names upon that roll of honour.

My story is now moving on, taking one name I have made up which appeared on the board – Flight Lieutenant David Alford. As I travel back in time I am using a photograph of World War Two pilot John Gillespie Magee to frame David Alford’s image in my head. John Magee died in 1941 at the age of nineteen. His poem High Flight is very special to me, allow me here to share it with you:

Oh ! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, – and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of – wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air…

Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or ever eagle flew –
And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

GENIUS !  Stop for a moment and consider those words being written by a nineteen year old.

John Gillespie Magee wore a moustache. Most young RAF pilots from World War One wore moustaches, such was a bit of a trademark.  Why did they wear them ?  because they could, purely and simply because they could. These were teenagers, boys, only just out of childhood and there they were giving their young lives so we could live our old lives.

Now for ON THIS DAY as we dip back over the past seventy years to see what was happening:

28^th January 1956: Elvis Presley makes his first national television appearance.

28^th January 1958: The lLgo company patents its bricks.

28^th January 1986: Space Shuttle Challenger disintegrates on take off killing all seven astronauts on board.

As it is every day as I write this feature I go through Wikipedia and look at the long list of people who were born on this day over the past seventy years. Sadly, as with every day I do not recognise a single name.

Yesterday there were another 25,306 cases of china virus and another 1,725 deaths. I try every night before I sleep to picture those who have died, their families and all who cared for them but the numbers are so high it is an impossible task.

It is now generally accepted that some kind of memorial will be established if and when we get out of the pandemic to honour those who died. I go back to my thoughts on Holocaust Memorial Day and that said about World War One by the poet. How can we properly remember the real people within the figures ?

Yesterday The BBC had a wall of faces behind its news presenters, faces of some of those who have died in the pandemic. I thought that was lovely but today it’s not there anymore. Why ?

Yesterday I wrote another 4,161 words bringing my total since 1^st January to 246,734 words. Will I today hit the quarter of a million ?  Yesterday I wrote:

Dave’s Diary:          1,225 words

Behind The Noose:  927 words opening the case of James Hanratty

The Secret Diary Of A Silly Old Man Aged Thirteen And Three Quarters: 497 words

Milton Keynes A Disco For A New City:  1,512 words

All this is part of my challenge to beat the world record of Barbara Cartland and publish a minimum of twenty-four books in a year. I am hoping that Amazon has got its act together so I can add three more text to my bookshelf at the end of the month.

I have often said that if I were in business I would rather have one hundred customers spending one pound each than one spending one hundred pounds. It is good to see that the BBC and other areas of the media have stopped focussing on people and what they are doing to falsely turn them into super heroes. It is better to have one hundred people doing their little bit than a single superhero.

Next week our featured hospital will be PAPWORTH in Cambridge, the hospital that pioneered organ transplantation and is the country’s leading hospital in that field. As we do each week copies of our SMILE card and our NHS quiz will be sent out.

The Milton Keynes Disco is something I am writing for teachers at Oakgrove School, on Monday I plan to print off where we are with this and send it to staff ahead of publication on Amazon.

Staff and Residents at Flowers Care Home will receive three more decade quizzes, this week covering 1970’s, 1980’s and 1990’s.

One  hundred food boxes distributed by Dreamasi will have a quiz sheet titled: A MIND OF USELESS INFORMATION. Copies will also be sent to our community police officers.

Today I have to sort all of these out. This is just a simple way to give people something positive to do.

Also this week I am going to include something I have been working on to encourage people to write a diary/blog a bit like this. I will include a copy of this at the end of today’s page.  This is also something to help people to keep their minds active and positive I these terrible times BUT also it is inviting people to create a bit of HERITAGE for generations within their families in years to come.

Ann Frank gave us the heritage of her diary.  The War Poets gave us heritage. I would like to think that having people write diaries they could create a heritage remembering those who have died within this pandemic but also celebrating the love and care, the extra miles so many are going to keep us SMILING.

OK then, here is that diarist recruiting platform:

Hi there I’m David

Sometimes when I write stories I use the pen-name Max Robinson but that’s another story – pardon the pun ! I am really David but my friends call me Dave, you are my friend so please call me DAVE. If you have been getting SMILE cards or quiz sheets they have come from me. Hey can I show you how I sign my name:

Take that bit of SMILING fun and use it as

you sign your name. Go on do it.

I have some fun maxims within which

I manage my daily activities:

LIFE IS A DISCO SO DANCE

Here’s another thought. LIFE IS A NOVEL SO START WRITING. I want you to start writing but first I need you to keep reading as I explain.

I started writing an on-line diary in December 2016, on-line diary = BLOG = Web Log.

Do you keep a diary ?  Do you write a blog ?  I am hoping by the time you get to the end of this bit of writing I will have persuaded you to have a go.

Queen Victoria kept a diary you know. Samuel Pepys, you do know who he was don’t you, is possibly the most famous diary writer from history.

We are living through some terrible times, times unseen before in world history. Could I invite you to start writing a diary and record your experiences ?  You could simply do this as a private venture in a notebook but keep that notebook in a safe place and pass it down to your children and grandchildren. Let it become a family heirloom and record of time  which will go down in history for your family to read. You could, if you wish, write an on-line blog. Check out what I am doing here in 2021. Go to my website www.kissesnsmiles.com then click on the diary button. PLEASE tell me about your blog and where to find it. e-mail me at dashford566@gmail.com It would be lovely if several people started writing blogs and we shared them together to help people SMILE.

Have you had your covid vaccination yet ? Let me talk for a moment about a different

vaccination.

The SMILE cards I and my friends send out, the quiz sheets are all designed to help make people SMILE. We have a little Facebook group if you are into social media. We call it The Sunshine Smile Crew. Back to the website: www.kissesnsmiles.com and this time the button you need to click looks like this: 

Join and help spread SMILES.

On the website you will find SMILE OF THE DAY – every day you can vaccinate people against sadness by sharing that SMILE.

Back to writing your diary/blog. LIFE IS A TYPO – IF YOU DO NOT MAKE ANY YOU ARE NOT LIVING IT FAST ENOUGH. True ?  Don’t worry about typo’s. I sometimes say I deliberately leave a few in a piece of writing for those who take delight in finding them. Have you found anyb typo’s here ? (There you are I just put one in for you – he he he)

In your diary you will, of course, write down what you have done and if this lock down ever ends where you have been. What is important, very important is not just to record the facts, the events but also how you felt as you experienced them and moved through them. And, of course, you do not need to write an entry every day.

Have I tempted you to start a diary/blog ?  I hope I have. Please tell me and invite me to be your first reader.

Take care – be happy – stay safe and NEVER FORGET TO SMILE.

And with that CLICHÉ OF THE DAY – it’s the same cliché every day !

Speak again tomorrow

Dave