Thursday 28 August 2008

Memories

...if only I had one!

So the gauntlet has been chucked on the floor, and never, no never say never, not always, rather, one to shirk from a challenge, this particular one, I'll have a go at.

The task is to remember where you were and what you were doing when you heard about, in this case five, key historical events -and then when you have regaled it entertainingly, task, in this case five, other bloggers/people to do the same. Its a meme thing.

Its a modern-day expansion of the claim that everyone knows where they were/what they were doing when Kennedy got shot.

In an oblique, allusive kind of way this challenge reminds be of John Lennon's lyric 'Life is what happens to you while your busy making other plans'.

Here, it's history happens while your busy doing other things. In my case having birthdays. Indeed, I do suspect that history's great unfolding purpose is to ruin my birthday:

Some Munros are bigger than anybody

Princess Diana's death - 31 August 1997
I used to go hill-walking quite a bit, sometimes even went munro-bagging (I once had the good fortune to witness another munro-bagger being 'piped up to the top of his final munro and toasted with whisky). This particular weekend was the nearest one to my (mid-September) birthday when my Autistic son was also away in respite care. So it would have been really wrong of me not to have taken the opportunity to have a birthday walk in Scotland. So we did.

Having done the concentrated bit of negotiating the motorways to some cassette- taped music and then turning onto the lovely winding, heather-edged roads across the hills we thought we would tune in to the radio, only to find everything suspended in favour of easy-listening music to soothe the nerves of an inevitably traumatised public and repeated commentary about the fact that Diana.Was.Dead. Blimey! thought we as we laced our boots and headed for the misty tops, remembering to remember our sandwiches.

Margaret Thatcher's resignation - 22 November 1990
Don't remember any exact context but I was definitely in front of the telly when I saw it. I was in the final trimester of the pregnancy of my second child -the one who subsequently turned out to be Autistic ...perhaps it was Thatcher's fault! :o

Attack on the twin towers - 11 September 2001
Lazily, I'll paste a slightly edited version of the comment I left over at Sadie's hospitable hostelry before I realised I had been tagged with the same meme:

my birthday is 'sometime around' September 11th. in 2001 I was collecting a birthday present from my mother when I arrived at her house and the rolling news which was on featured slow motion aeroplanes slamming into tall buildings and then the collapsing towers. I remember thinking, that's an act of war. The rest, as they say is history, although it isn't yet.

Imagine trying to open and enjoy a birthday present while simultaneously watching the Twin Towers collapse, listen to the terrified testimony of those fleeing the scene and know that people had burned to death. Not conducive to celebration at all.

Now every time I look forward, as excitedly as one my age can, to my birthday, there's a dark shadow over it as I remember not happy birthdays past but the more dramatic events of the same time 2001. Its a time of mirth tempered by horror.

See what I mean about the birthday thing?

I know, I know, how totally selfish of me.

Al-qaeda? Flippin party-poopers.

England's World Cup Semi Final v Germany in - 4 July 1990
Wasn't that the one where Gazza cried? And we went out on penalties? Were I a more avid football fan then maybe, yes, I would have remembered some more precise details. I can't, alot has happened since then, not least the birth of a son in 1991 who was ill at birth and later in 1993 was diagnosed as Autistic. I would have been just pregnant with him then. I certainly remember where I was when he was diagnosed, once as 'suspected Autism' and secondly as confirmed Autistic.

I do remember the World Cup 2006. The weather was gorgeous and I thought what a shame to be stuck inside watching the football. But who am I to be defeated by adverse circumstances! With the help of an extention cable fed through the kitchen window, a portable telly and some Chardonnay the score was Me 1, Shit Life 0

It was also just a couple of months off my birthday.

President Kennedy's Assassination - 22 November 1963
Can't actually remember whether I was born then or not.

History from Below

There are other moments in my own personal history which are so dramatic and pivotal and more immediately influential that some of the great historic moments in this exercise and throughout contemporary history which we are supposed to pay attention to as good patriotic/citizens of the world, barely register.

I went to the hospital with my just 2 year old son to have the diagnosis of Autism confirmed and stepped from that appointment, immediately after, into another part of the hospital to visit my mother who was trussed up in traction for some osteo-bone-crumbling-thing, she called her nurse to bring me some hot sweet tea as I was trembling and in semi-shock, as I already knew there was something, but nevertheless. I also recall another occasion, still coming to terms with it, pushing his pram and crying in the rain, as it was okay because nobody could tell.

'When did you last see your father' is the subject and title of a famous historic painting. In my own childhood, the same question would be worthy of a scene on a Grayson Perry vase.

Back in the 60s/70s the 'Great Man' (there apparantly weren't many women in history before then) theory of history whereby history was told by and about Kings, Queens and Prime Ministers, came in to question from historians of 'history from below'.

Frequently, history for the mass of ordinary individuals is played out with a mere walk on part for those who would reckon themselves historically significant.

Oh dear, I don't think I have quite engaged with the spirit of this meme.

But one thing I must ask is that since its nearly my birthday, will all global and would-be historical figures please refrain from spoiling it for me any further this year!

Thanks.

And now in the best tradition of interactive quizzes and with a nod to the olympics theme, I hereby botch the handing over of the baton to:

Rupa Huq
donpaskini
ohhh help me out Iain with a top 20/40 bloggers who haven't already been tagged with your meme.

mrsb

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