Songs of Saturday ~ The Umbrella Man
any umbrellas to mend today?
On a day about umbrellas, courtesy of Paula Light;
https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/74951/posts/3126787418
I just couldn’t resist this Flanagan and Allen song. So English from 1939, just before war broke out.
You don’t get many double acts like that these days.
Just as well really.
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jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
no doubt listening to the Light Programme on the BBC
Armistice Day
they were young, they were pals, 744,000 of them died
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they shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old:
age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
at the going down of the sun and in the morning
we will remember them.
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jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
lest we forget
Remembrance Sunday
at the 11th hour, on the 11th day, of the 11th month of 1918
the guns fell silent
The Third Battle of Ypres, also called the Battle of Passchendaele, was another of the horrific meat-grinders fought in Flanders Fields during the Great War.
In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
between the crosses row on row
In England today is Remembrance Sunday, many of us will wear a poppy, and remember the 887,888 dead from the United Kingdom and her then Colonies.
This song is a poignant reminder of those days.
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jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
Reinforcing Failure
don’t waste your life by reinforcing failure
even Marmaduke couldn’t get me to see sense
We all do it. Something isn’t working out so we try harder. We really suck at our job, so we put in more hours. Our relationship is going to hell in a handcart so we pick ourselves up and try again. Our partner stole from us, cheated on us, abused us….. so we forgive them and start over. This is called reinforcing failure, and it’s the biggest mistake anyone can make in Life, Love, and War. And, nobody really understands it.
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again. ~ Robert the Bruce 1314
I was taught that quotation at school, all about the fable of Robert the Bruce, King of Scotland, and the spider. A lot of the time it’s very true that if we at first fail at something we should go back and work harder until we succeed. That was certainly true for me at grammar school, where it turned out that I could barely write and certainly couldn’t spell. As the three R’s are the whole basis of modern life I had to work very hard at English and Calligraphy until I became something of a wordsmith.
If there is no choice whatsoever, then we have to keep trying until we succeed. And yet, sometimes no matter how hard we try we are quite likely to waste our lives repeating the same mistake over and over again, because what we are trying to achieve is never going to work. Einstein knew this, and famously said;
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results. ~ Albert Einstein
If what you are doing isn’t working, then you have to try something else instead. The problem is that people are creatures of habits and routines, who mostly don’t want to leave their own comfort zone. Most people don’t move house, change their jobs, or become of a different church and faith. Not often anyway.
Relationships are different ~ around half of marriages in the USA end in divorce. Some things in relationships are too intolerable to bear. But 80% of divorcees remarry and about 5% remarry their ex. Unless they do something very different in their new marriage then that’s going to turn to dross too.
Me, I spent years trying to make a toxic relationship work, by trying harder…..
Some say that when a relationship isn’t working it’s time to find someone else instead. And that you can’t expect someone to change just to keep you happy. All I know is that, in the relationship I just walked away from, I did the very best I could ~ most of the time.
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jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
Einstein also said;
reality is an illusion
albeit a very persistent one
Tunes on Tuesday ~ Royal Air Force
today is Battle of Britain Day
On September 15th 1940 the Nazi Luftwaffe met the Spitfires and Hurricanes of the Royal Air Force over the skies of southern England. By the end of the day the Luftwaffe had lost twice as many aircraft as had the RAF. The Luftwaffe was broken and Hitler called off Operation Sealion, the proposed invasion of England. Democracy had been saved for the world.
Churchill called the 2,927 pilots who had taken part ‘The Few’, and 510 perished during the battle. Only one of The Few is still alive today; 101 years old John ‘Paddy’ Hemingway DFC.
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jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
during the battle the Hawker Hurricane shot down more German aircraft than did the Supermarine Spitfire.
Enola Gay
on August 6th 1945 the B29 Superfortress Enola Gay
became the first aircraft to drop an atomic bomb
The Boeing B29 Superfortress was the most sophisticated, complex, and expensive aircraft ever built up to that time. After Japan’s leaders ignored a demand to surrender, President Harry S. Truman authorised the atomic strike, in order to avoid the millions of casualties expected if ground troops invaded Japan’s Home Islands. Under the command of Colonel Paul Tibbets the Enola Gay flew from Tinian in the Mariana Islands and released the bomb at 08:15 over Hiroshima.
At that time the B29 Superfortress was the only aircraft capable of carrying the 10,000 or so pounds of the atomic weapons Little Boy and Fat Man the approximately 1,400 miles from Tinian to their targets in Japan, and getting home again.
The Atomic age had begun.
Japan unconditionally surrendered on September 2nd 1945 after a second strike by the B29 Bockscar on the Japanese city of Nagasaki. More people were killed and injured by the RAF’s conventional bombing of Hamburg than the casualties caused by the atomic bomb at Nagasaki.
Today, the Enola Gay is exhibited at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Chantilly, VA. Bockscar may be seen at The National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson AFB near Dayton, OH.
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jack collier jackcollier7@talktalk.net
Scenes on Sunday ~ Destruction of Society
our civilisation is under attack from within and without
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jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
Fascism is rearing it’s ugly head again
state control of everything
We’ll Meet Again ~ Dame Vera Lynn dies aged 103
and there’ll be bluebirds over the white cliffs of Dover
During WWII the Germans had the overtly sexual Marlene Dietrich singing Lili Marlene, which was the unofficial anthem of the Afrika Korps. We had the wholesome Forces Sweetheart, Vera Lynn. Kind of says a lot about out differing national characteristics.
Dame Vera Lynn is now 103, and she is still almost as big an inspiration to Englishmen of a certain age as is the Queen.
Dame Vera Lynn, the Forces Sweetheart has died aged 103. She will be much mourned.
Please listen with respect
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jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
after a girl has pushed an ambulance up a sand dune, she deserves a cold beer
Overlord June 6th 1944
this is much the greatest thing we have ever attempted
On the 6th of June 1944 at and before dawn, 156,115 American, British, Canadian, and many other nations’ troops invaded Normandy in France. Some 6,939 ships and landing vessels, 2,395 aircraft, and 867 gliders were committed to Operation Overlord.
This was the start of one of the 5 great battles of WWII.
24,000 airborne troops began the liberation of France just after dawn
the beaches; Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, Sword
M4 Sherman medium tank
Hawker Typhoon wearing Invasion Stripes
The landings succeeded, but as Wellington remarked after the Battle of Waterloo, ‘it was a damn close run thing’.
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jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
The venerable Hawker Hurricane was still flying in 1944
Scenes on Sunday ~ Aircraft
never was so much owed by so many to so few
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jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
Korean war dogfighters
