You can see the fear in their faces and understandably so. I wonder how many survived the day.
Thank god our generations have never had to go through anything like that.
Tolkien’s active military career only lasted three months, but it must have been three months of hell, on the Somme.
Better that, though, than being commanded by Cadorna on the Isonzo, or one of the Russian or Austrian idiots on the Eastern Front.
The Somme was terrifying, but I'm not sure being on the battlefield of Waterloo 100 years earlier was much better.
Absolutely peak PB question...
One day on the Somme, one day at Waterloo, or one day at Agincourt?
The Somme... probably. Over a fifth of the British forces ended up killed or missing, but it was fought over nearly five months, so unless your dice rolled really badly, you'd have a very good chance of surviving unscathed. The first day of the Somme, though, accounted for over half of those casualties
c.10% fatalities at Agincourt, for the English, and c.10% "killed and missing" at Waterloo - so a damn close-run thing between those two options.
10% at Agincourt is not my recollection - where is that from?
Total casualties were 25% in Wellington’s army.
Not a criticism of you but I always find the use of “casualties” to be really frustrating as it lumps together dead and injured.
I know you are a historian but do you also not find it a bit of a misleading grouping?
The figure of dead is v important as they can never fight again, then there will be those badly injured who can never fight again but might be able to contribute again to the military or society (the old invalid regiments who manned a lot of British fortifications for example) and those injured who could eventually return to the front line.
Should we not distinguish between dead and injured rather than lump them together?
TRUMP: Nothing. He's upset he's losing his EV mandate. But he could lose a lot more than that, I can tell you right now. Elon can lose a lot more than that.
I have a memory of my parents shipping me off to my Aunt's for an end of the Sixties Party on New year's Eve. I would have been three and a month. The same thing happened when our kid was born. Three and a half.
But what's your first memory of a non-personal event? Something in the news? Or something that happened in your town, but not personally witnessed? Perhaps discussed in front of you
For me, as I say, it is Apollo 11. Age 6
My dad always claimed he could remember his Dad and a friend discussing Peace in Our Time, and Munich, when he was 4
Yes, that too. I was thinking of overtly political events, so had excluded that.
I had an Airfix kit of the Lunar module. I think my older brother got the Saturn V...
You can see the fear in their faces and understandably so. I wonder how many survived the day.
Thank god our generations have never had to go through anything like that.
Tolkien’s active military career only lasted three months, but it must have been three months of hell, on the Somme.
Better that, though, than being commanded by Cadorna on the Isonzo, or one of the Russian or Austrian idiots on the Eastern Front.
The Somme was terrifying, but I'm not sure being on the battlefield of Waterloo 100 years earlier was much better.
Absolutely peak PB question...
One day on the Somme, one day at Waterloo, or one day at Agincourt?
The Somme... probably. Over a fifth of the British forces ended up killed or missing, but it was fought over nearly five months, so unless your dice rolled really badly, you'd have a very good chance of surviving unscathed. The first day of the Somme, though, accounted for over half of those casualties
c.10% fatalities at Agincourt, for the English, and c.10% "killed and missing" at Waterloo - so a damn close-run thing between those two options.
10% at Agincourt is not my recollection - where is that from?
Total casualties were 25% in Wellington’s army.
Not a criticism of you but I always find the use of “casualties” to be really frustrating as it lumps together dead and injured.
I know you are a historian but do you also not find it a bit of a misleading grouping?
The figure of dead is v important as they can never fight again, then there will be those badly injured who can never fight again but might be able to contribute again to the military or society (the old invalid regiments who manned a lot of British fortifications for example) and those injured who could eventually return to the front line.
Should we not distinguish between dead and injured rather than lump them together?
We rarely have detailed information. But, it’s a fair rule of thumb that about 50% of the wounded would succumb to sepsis, prior to antibiotics.
You could have a man, who survives the battle, and just takes a minor graze at the end, dying of infection.
Now: some banks might have $60m of customer deposits, and another $30m of Certificates of Deposits or something else. But it simply not the case they lend out a multiple of their deposits.
The issue with fractional reserve banking - and the reason that people get confused - is that when a bank lends money to someone, then it creates a deposit somewhere else in the banking system."
Yep I know that @rcs1000, but I wasn't going into that detail in replying to @hyufd. The key point being that depending upon the ratio of a bank's lending to its deposit determines the new money created in the economy. I deposit a £1 in the bank, the bank lends it to someone who deposits it and there is now £2 sitting on deposit. If everyone wants to withdraw their money there would be a run on the bank.
I have a memory of my parents shipping me off to my Aunt's for an end of the Sixties Party on New year's Eve. I would have been three and a month. The same thing happened when our kid was born. Three and a half.
But what's your first memory of a non-personal event? Something in the news? Or something that happened in your town, but not personally witnessed? Perhaps discussed in front of you
For me, as I say, it is Apollo 11. Age 6
My dad always claimed he could remember his Dad and a friend discussing Peace in Our Time, and Munich, when he was 4
It's a good question and difficult to disentangle. I do remember the World Cup Final of 1970 being discussed. But only cos it was my brother's Christening the same day. 3 and a half. I definitely remember decimal currency coming in when I was four, but again that was cos of my Mam's excitement at the change she got from the shop.
Ipsos Holyrood list voting with the big Green surge SNP: 26% Labour: 22% Reform UK: 16% Scottish Green Party: 15% Conservatives: 10% Liberal Democrats: 8% Alba Party: 2% Other: 1%
I have a memory of my parents shipping me off to my Aunt's for an end of the Sixties Party on New year's Eve. I would have been three and a month. The same thing happened when our kid was born. Three and a half.
But what's your first memory of a non-personal event? Something in the news? Or something that happened in your town, but not personally witnessed? Perhaps discussed in front of you
For me, as I say, it is Apollo 11. Age 6
My dad always claimed he could remember his Dad and a friend discussing Peace in Our Time, and Munich, when he was 4
Yes, that too. I was thinking of overtly political events, so had excluded that.
I had an Airfix kit of the Lunar module. I think my older brother got the Saturn V...
I was born in 1975. I certainly had no memory of male Prime Ministers before Major and remember thinking the concept an musing oddity when it was pointed out to me aged about 7 that such things were possible - so that would be in relation to the 1983 election. My first political memory is off Michael Foot's wife being knocked over by a low-hanging branch in an open-topped bus.
I think I remember the party on the playing field at the back of the estate for the silver jubilee when I had just turned two, though I am probably conflating it with the same thing for the ChazzleDizzle in 1981, which I definitely remember, when I was 6. Actually, I have quite a lot of memories of the ChazzleDizzle - not necessarily the thing itself but the thing being current. I remember they drive through our suburb (this may be a couple of years later - I think I was in junior school by then) and the class dividing on whether we were on Charles's side or Diana's - it probably essentially split along gender lines. I certainly remember the Falklands War, when I was 7.
My first sporting memory is of the foul by Harald Schumacher on Patrick Battison in the 1982 Football World Cup. Even then, I remember thinking it a fundamentally stupid sport. My first cultural memory is of my parents listening to Abba in the car, though my first I would claim of my own is my fondness for the Vapor's 'Turning Japanese'. I can't imagine how I accessed this. Not necessarily a massively appropriate song for a five year old. I have numerous snippets of memories from 2, 3, 4 years old - but they are like tiny context-free vignettes, viewed through a keyhole: seeing a thunderstorm, sitting in the paddling pool on a hot day (probably in the summer of 77), arguing over the lyrics to 'all things bright and beautiful' (I was right, btw), children's television, playgroups. Toys. Trains (and suddenly, unbidden, the smell of trains in the 70s...)
I have a memory of my parents shipping me off to my Aunt's for an end of the Sixties Party on New year's Eve. I would have been three and a month. The same thing happened when our kid was born. Three and a half.
But what's your first memory of a non-personal event? Something in the news? Or something that happened in your town, but not personally witnessed? Perhaps discussed in front of you
For me, as I say, it is Apollo 11. Age 6
My dad always claimed he could remember his Dad and a friend discussing Peace in Our Time, and Munich, when he was 4
It's a good question and difficult to disentangle. I do remember the World Cup Final of 1970 being discussed. But only cos it was my brother's Christening the same day. 3 and a half. I definitely remember decimal currency coming in when I was four, but again that was cos of my Mam's excitement at the change she got from the shop.
That's valid and impressive! Remembering a non-personal event aged 3 and a half
The winner so far
I have a weird fugitive memory of my falling out of a cot aged 2 and something. Incredibly dim and smoky memory
And I've been told I did fall out of a cot at that time, dramatically, but it is quite possible I invented the memory to fit the story, when told later
The earliest precise memories - and they are precise, i recall other kids, and being told to sleep at weird times - are from my first days at nursery school, just turned 4
The Bob Vylan lads are trying to dig themselves out of a hole.
One of those acts I hadn't heard of until everyone started talking about them. Still have no real clue and thats's absolutely fine.
What I find so offensive about Bob Vylan is that the lyrics are so poor. They just seem to be rants with obscenity turned up to 11. Shelley raged against the establishment but produced Ozymandius. We have gone from: "My name is Ozymandius, King of Kings. Look on my works ye mighty and despair." To
" I heard you want your country back. Shut the f*** up."
I have a memory of my parents shipping me off to my Aunt's for an end of the Sixties Party on New year's Eve. I would have been three and a month. The same thing happened when our kid was born. Three and a half.
But what's your first memory of a non-personal event? Something in the news? Or something that happened in your town, but not personally witnessed? Perhaps discussed in front of you
For me, as I say, it is Apollo 11. Age 6
My dad always claimed he could remember his Dad and a friend discussing Peace in Our Time, and Munich, when he was 4
Yes, that too. I was thinking of overtly political events, so had excluded that.
I had an Airfix kit of the Lunar module. I think my older brother got the Saturn V...
I was born in 1975. I certainly had no memory of male Prime Ministers before Major and remember thinking the concept an musing oddity when it was pointed out to me aged about 6 that such things were possible. I think I remember the party on the playing field at the back of the estate for the silver jubilee when I had just turned two, though I am probably conflating it with the same thing for the ChazzleDizzle in 1981, which I definitely remember. I certainly remember the Falklands War. My first political memory is off Michael Foot's wife being knocked over by a low-hanging branch in an open-topped bus. My first sporting memory is of the foul by Harald Schumacher on Patrick Battison in the 1982 Football World Cup. Even then, I remember thinking it a fundamentally stupid sport. My first cultural memory is of my parents listening to Abba in the car, though my first I would claim of my own is my fondness for the Vapor's 'Turning Japanese'. I can't imagine how I accessed this. Not necessarily a massively appropriate song for a five year old. I have numerous snippets of memories from 2, 3, 4 years old - but they are like tiny context-free vignettes, viewed through a keyhole: seeing a thunderstorm, sitting in the paddling pool on a hot day (probably in the summer of 77), arguing over the lyrics to 'all things bright and beautiful' (I was right, btw), children's television, playgroups. Toys. Trains (and suddenly, unbidden, the smell of trains in the 70s...)
If, as a writer or moviemaker, one could capture that weird "keyhole" effect of super-early childhood memories, it would be a powerful thing
"‘I’m taking on the Blob’: the 18-year-old running a £400m council for Reform George Finch on the row over Warwickshire council’s new flag rules – and why he’s undaunted by managing 5,000 staff and a £400m budget" (£)
He's more impressive than the Councillor "Lord Joseph Boam" of Leicestershire, who is an Andrew Tate fan who has expressed contempt for people who are suffering from depression.
However his flag arguments do not make sense, and imo he is swallowing too many RefUK boilerplate positions unexamined. He is not understanding the limitations of inexperience, and that he has feet of clay like all of us. From this piece:
Finch says: “My question is, and its a simple one: why is there a non-elected bureaucrat on £200,000 or more making decisions that elected councillors should make?
“She is disregarding democracy – I was elected with the biggest majority in Warwickshire and I can’t even get a flag changed. It shows me a blob of bureaucrats that are disregarding the majority. I can’t imagine what the blob is like in Whitehall if it’s this bad here.”
He is the leader of a minority party leading the Council. His personal majority is irrelevant. "Disregarding the majority" is BS because they are 22 from 57 Councillors - what majority?
From the other Telegraph piece quoted by I think @Andy_JS , the Chief Executive pointed out that in Warwicks the convention was that flags practice was set by the Chief Exec, not the Council Leader, and identified to him the appropriate process via the Councillor body / Executive for changing that practice.
But he got his knickers in a twist, and wanted to arrogate to himself without proper process the ability to make that decision. Then Zia Yusuf piled in with the rhetoric.
I'd suggest that at this time Officer insistence on RefUK Councillors following correct process is massively important, not least as part of the cultural training of RefUK councillors; we know what happened with Trump.
(As a personal aside, he also expresses avid admiration for Lee Anderson, which is 'a view).
Obviously, like most Fukker politicians and all of their voters he knows fuck all about fuck all. However, this etoliated streak of piss does seem to be adept at generating agitprop articles in the Telegraph so maybe he does have a future in politics.
It still feels fresh when we were losing the generation that actually fought (like Harry Patch). We will be doing the same for WW2 soon.
I've just been checking the stats. There are maybe 1000-2000 people, worldwide, born before the Somme
But living "memory" is a different matter. To "remember" the Somme you'd have to be at least 5 years old when it happened, given that 5 is roughly the age our first fixed memories begin, albeit hazily
There are just 17 people worldwide old enough to "remember" the Somme
The very oldest person on the planet is an Englishwoman, Ethel Caterham, born August 1909, so she would have been almost 7 when the Somme happened. Definitely old enough to recall it, if anyone in England chose to tell her as a little girl
I remember the Falklands distinctly, including the return of the Canberra along the channel (from Seaton). I was 9.
Before that? Not much.
I remember watching the results of the 1970 general election, when I was eight, and the weekend of Bloody Sunday the following year, when we arrived in Belfast, on the way to an unfortunately timed summer holiday to S Ireland.
Churchill's funeral for me, then a gap in 1966 as nothing much happened in the UK - or at least not in Scotland.
I have a memory of my parents shipping me off to my Aunt's for an end of the Sixties Party on New year's Eve. I would have been three and a month. The same thing happened when our kid was born. Three and a half.
But what's your first memory of a non-personal event? Something in the news? Or something that happened in your town, but not personally witnessed? Perhaps discussed in front of you
For me, as I say, it is Apollo 11. Age 6
My dad always claimed he could remember his Dad and a friend discussing Peace in Our Time, and Munich, when he was 4
I would probably date it by Children's TV programmes or Olympic / Commonwealth Games, or maybe certain events.
Decimalisation: definitely no specific memory. Men's 400m Final at the Munich Olympics: definite memory of the final bend. Title Sequence of Mary, Mungo and Midge: definite memory. But that could have been any time 1969-1974.
You can see the fear in their faces and understandably so. I wonder how many survived the day.
Thank god our generations have never had to go through anything like that.
Tolkien’s active military career only lasted three months, but it must have been three months of hell, on the Somme.
Better that, though, than being commanded by Cadorna on the Isonzo, or one of the Russian or Austrian idiots on the Eastern Front.
The Somme was terrifying, but I'm not sure being on the battlefield of Waterloo 100 years earlier was much better.
Absolutely peak PB question...
One day on the Somme, one day at Waterloo, or one day at Agincourt?
The Somme... probably. Over a fifth of the British forces ended up killed or missing, but it was fought over nearly five months, so unless your dice rolled really badly, you'd have a very good chance of surviving unscathed. The first day of the Somme, though, accounted for over half of those casualties
c.10% fatalities at Agincourt, for the English, and c.10% "killed and missing" at Waterloo - so a damn close-run thing between those two options.
10% at Agincourt is not my recollection - where is that from?
Total casualties were 25% in Wellington’s army.
Not a criticism of you but I always find the use of “casualties” to be really frustrating as it lumps together dead and injured.
I know you are a historian but do you also not find it a bit of a misleading grouping?
The figure of dead is v important as they can never fight again, then there will be those badly injured who can never fight again but might be able to contribute again to the military or society (the old invalid regiments who manned a lot of British fortifications for example) and those injured who could eventually return to the front line.
Should we not distinguish between dead and injured rather than lump them together?
We rarely have detailed information. But, it’s a fair rule of thumb that about 50% of the wounded would succumb to sepsis, prior to antibiotics.
War (for obvious reasons) tends to be analysed from a distance, as regards both time and location. I often wonder how it would be if it were covered in real time technicolour detail, with no censorship, no allowance for viewer squeamishness, no detachment, no euphemisms, no geopolitical sheen, just presented as it is in all of its horror. Would there be less of it? I reckon there probably would.
I have a memory of my parents shipping me off to my Aunt's for an end of the Sixties Party on New year's Eve. I would have been three and a month. The same thing happened when our kid was born. Three and a half.
But what's your first memory of a non-personal event? Something in the news? Or something that happened in your town, but not personally witnessed? Perhaps discussed in front of you
For me, as I say, it is Apollo 11. Age 6
My dad always claimed he could remember his Dad and a friend discussing Peace in Our Time, and Munich, when he was 4
I'm too young to remember the bombing itself, but my earliest recollection of TV news is the investigation into Lockerbie. The image of the cockpit was on TV a lot.
My first memories of the wider world are sporting, I definitely have a primary recollection of the 1978 FA Cup Final (but oddly not 77 given United won) and of parts of the 1978 World Cup, the ticker tape in the Argentina-Holland final is especially vivid.
In terms of world events, I'm sure I knew of the Winter of Discontent, but no TV image comes to mind from primary memory, and Thatcher's becoming PM I think I recall from images since. The definitive one I absolutely know I saw at the time was the Iranian Embassy Siege, and I was nearly 10. I also recall the ITN job losses ticker from quite early on.
I wonder if the family kept away from the news at the time, the Woolworth's fire was in that time window and Dad had been treated at the scene and I knew he'd been involved in something, but I didn't know directly of that as a news event.
You can see the fear in their faces and understandably so. I wonder how many survived the day.
Thank god our generations have never had to go through anything like that.
Tolkien’s active military career only lasted three months, but it must have been three months of hell, on the Somme.
Better that, though, than being commanded by Cadorna on the Isonzo, or one of the Russian or Austrian idiots on the Eastern Front.
The Somme was terrifying, but I'm not sure being on the battlefield of Waterloo 100 years earlier was much better.
Absolutely peak PB question...
One day on the Somme, one day at Waterloo, or one day at Agincourt?
The Somme... probably. Over a fifth of the British forces ended up killed or missing, but it was fought over nearly five months, so unless your dice rolled really badly, you'd have a very good chance of surviving unscathed. The first day of the Somme, though, accounted for over half of those casualties
c.10% fatalities at Agincourt, for the English, and c.10% "killed and missing" at Waterloo - so a damn close-run thing between those two options.
10% at Agincourt is not my recollection - where is that from?
Total casualties were 25% in Wellington’s army.
Not a criticism of you but I always find the use of “casualties” to be really frustrating as it lumps together dead and injured.
I know you are a historian but do you also not find it a bit of a misleading grouping?
The figure of dead is v important as they can never fight again, then there will be those badly injured who can never fight again but might be able to contribute again to the military or society (the old invalid regiments who manned a lot of British fortifications for example) and those injured who could eventually return to the front line.
Should we not distinguish between dead and injured rather than lump them together?
We rarely have detailed information. But, it’s a fair rule of thumb that about 50% of the wounded would succumb to sepsis, prior to antibiotics.
War (for obvious reasons) tends to be analysed from a distance, as regards both time and location. I often wonder how it would be if it were covered in real time technicolour detail, with no censorship, no allowance for viewer squeamishness, no detachment, no euphemisms, no geopolitical sheen, just presented as it is in all of its horror. Would there be less of it? I reckon there probably would.
I think we’d get used to it, the same way the Mongols got used to killing vast numbers of people in person, rather than at a distance.
I have a memory of my parents shipping me off to my Aunt's for an end of the Sixties Party on New year's Eve. I would have been three and a month. The same thing happened when our kid was born. Three and a half.
But what's your first memory of a non-personal event? Something in the news? Or something that happened in your town, but not personally witnessed? Perhaps discussed in front of you
For me, as I say, it is Apollo 11. Age 6
My dad always claimed he could remember his Dad and a friend discussing Peace in Our Time, and Munich, when he was 4
I'm too young to remember the bombing itself, but my earliest recollection of TV news is the investigation into Lockerbie. The image of the cockpit was on TV a lot.
My first memories of the wider world are sporting, I definitely have a primary recollection of the 1978 FA Cup Final (but oddly not 77 given United won) and of parts of the 1978 World Cup, the ticker tape in the Argentina-Holland final is especially vivid.
In terms of world events, I'm sure I knew of the Winter of Discontent, but no TV image comes to mind from primary memory, and Thatcher's becoming PM I think I recall from images since. The definitive one I absolutely know I saw at the time was the Iranian Embassy Siege, and I was nearly 10. I also recall the ITN job losses ticker from quite early on.
I wonder if the family kept away from the news at the time, the Woolworth's fire was in that time window and Dad had been treated at the scene and I knew he'd been involved in something, but I didn't know directly of that as a news event.
An iconic one would be the mechanical Football Results Teleprinter (pre-vidiprinter) on Grandstand, but again that is a time period, not an event.
You’re being very disingenuous there William, I am shocked.
You haven’t posted the context, he’s pointing the evilness of Matt Goodwin saying Rishi Sunak isn’t English.
This is chilling stuff Goodwin is trading in. Yes, he circles around it, but ultimately this is just the world view of the skinhead.
Yes. But it is one of the inevitable outcomes of mass migration without the wholehearted consent of the exisiting population. Ethnicity is a fact - as well as a social imaginary. That nations have the right to control borders is a fact. The failure of border control leads to deadly focussing on ethnicity.
A further danger is seeing and diagnosing this issue as one of 'right' or 'left'. It isn't.
Three of my partners grandparents are Irish. As in born in Ireland, Irish accents, still live there/died there. All of mine were born and bred in London. I’d say, without any malice, this makes her less English than me, and by extension, my two children are also less English than me. I am less Irish than them. My partner certainly considers herself quite Irish, despite only spending time there on frequent family visits. I don’t see how any of this would be controversial. Do we deny her Irish blood? Or do we pretend she is just as English as me on top of being Irish as well?
Is she as English as you on top of being Irish?
Yes.
Unless she feels differently about it. But that's up to her, not Goodwin or anyone else.
Yes, and Sunak is as English as they come. I think distance matters in this sort of thing. Irish identity will persist because it's not far to visit on a fairly regular basis.
The impossibility of imposing a cultural or ethnic identity can be shown in a nice simple way, inspired by @Eabhal’s strange idea that it might be linked to school.
I went to the same school as Sunak and Douglas Jardine. We all consider or considered ourselves English. All educated in England, prep school, Boarding School and University.
Rishi is the only one of the three of us born in England. I’m the only one of us with English parents. Douglas Jardine was born in India to Scottish parents.
Rishi was PM of the United Kingdom, Douglas Jardine Captain of England Cricket and I represented GB at a sport (unnamed to reduce chances of doxxing myself) so all “represented” different concepts of the larger country.
Which of us is least English? Englishness to me is a cultural thing not a genetic or soil issue, I imagine it to be the same for the other two.
Is Kevin Pietersen as English as Nasser Hussain? Both born abroad to an English mother and non English Father, both captained England at Cricket… I’d say Hussain is more English by virtue of being schooled here, so it’s not all about blood and soil, but it’s a nuanced subject and it’s a spectrum rather than binary
Its about what a person feels, really. I knew a guy in NZ, born in the UK, moved to NZ pre-school, sounds like a Kiwi, thinks he is a Kiwi, basically is a Kiwi.
With sport its tricky. How many of the Kilted Kiwi's who played rugby for Scotland by dint of a grandparent genuinely felt Scottish? Did Zola Budd really feel British in 1984?
Everyone is different. Ryan Giggs could have played for England, and who knows, night have helped England to actually win something. He was on a hiding to nothing with Wales, but that was his country and so he played for Wales and I completely respect that. I am only ever English (well Wiltshire, tbh) and cannot conceive of pulling on another nations shirt, and singing the anthem etc.
Point of order. Ryan Giggs was never qualified to play for England at any time.
I’m sure I see him play at Perry Barr stadium for an England team (u18?) in the mid eighties.
As JNT said, the memory cheats
Eligibility was a bit more fluid then.
I remember in the 80s/90s you were eligible to play for the Republic of Ireland if you drank a pint of Guinness.
I remember Tony Cascarino played for the ROI on the grounds that his surname sounded a bit Irish (on reflection: no it doesn't. Perhaps in those days we were so blinded by any sort of apparent exoticism that a man with an 'o' on the end of his name could conceivably be from anywhere.).
My favourite of this stripe was the Scottish rugby player who qualified to play for Scotland solely on the grounds of having a grandparent from the Channel Islands, which is like having a wildcard. Though I can't now think who this was and the internet is giving me no clues. I don't think I've imagined it?
Weirdly I have a memory of music disturbing me in my bedroom and having to go sleep with my baby brother. This was the Bickershaw Festival of May 1972 when I would be 5. I have no memory of walking with Mam and Dad to see the Grateful Dead on the Sunday. (It was only across a couple of fields). Apparently they played for five hours.
You can see the fear in their faces and understandably so. I wonder how many survived the day.
Thank god our generations have never had to go through anything like that.
Tolkien’s active military career only lasted three months, but it must have been three months of hell, on the Somme.
Better that, though, than being commanded by Cadorna on the Isonzo, or one of the Russian or Austrian idiots on the Eastern Front.
The Somme was terrifying, but I'm not sure being on the battlefield of Waterloo 100 years earlier was much better.
Absolutely peak PB question...
One day on the Somme, one day at Waterloo, or one day at Agincourt?
The Somme... probably. Over a fifth of the British forces ended up killed or missing, but it was fought over nearly five months, so unless your dice rolled really badly, you'd have a very good chance of surviving unscathed. The first day of the Somme, though, accounted for over half of those casualties
c.10% fatalities at Agincourt, for the English, and c.10% "killed and missing" at Waterloo - so a damn close-run thing between those two options.
10% at Agincourt is not my recollection - where is that from?
Total casualties were 25% in Wellington’s army.
Not a criticism of you but I always find the use of “casualties” to be really frustrating as it lumps together dead and injured.
I know you are a historian but do you also not find it a bit of a misleading grouping?
The figure of dead is v important as they can never fight again, then there will be those badly injured who can never fight again but might be able to contribute again to the military or society (the old invalid regiments who manned a lot of British fortifications for example) and those injured who could eventually return to the front line.
Should we not distinguish between dead and injured rather than lump them together?
We rarely have detailed information. But, it’s a fair rule of thumb that about 50% of the wounded would succumb to sepsis, prior to antibiotics.
War (for obvious reasons) tends to be analysed from a distance, as regards both time and location. I often wonder how it would be if it were covered in real time technicolour detail, with no censorship, no allowance for viewer squeamishness, no detachment, no euphemisms, no geopolitical sheen, just presented as it is in all of its horror. Would there be less of it? I reckon there probably would.
It's all there on Telegram if you want it. Twitter and Reddit have gone Dick LaPussy over it.
I have a memory of my parents shipping me off to my Aunt's for an end of the Sixties Party on New year's Eve. I would have been three and a month. The same thing happened when our kid was born. Three and a half.
But what's your first memory of a non-personal event? Something in the news? Or something that happened in your town, but not personally witnessed? Perhaps discussed in front of you
For me, as I say, it is Apollo 11. Age 6
My dad always claimed he could remember his Dad and a friend discussing Peace in Our Time, and Munich, when he was 4
I can remember watching the 1980 FA Cup final when I was 5, and that years European Championships.
Weirdly I have a memory of music disturbing me in my bedroom and having to go sleep with my baby brother. This was the Bickershaw Festival of May 1972 when I would be 5. I have no memory of walking with Mam and Dad to see the Grateful Dead on the Sunday. (It was only across a couple of fields). Apparently they played for five hours.
I recall asking my father what the work MATT meant, in big bold capitals across the front of his Daily Mirror. "Matt Busby, Manchester United's manager," he replied. The story was the Munich air crash in February 1958.
I have a memory of my parents shipping me off to my Aunt's for an end of the Sixties Party on New year's Eve. I would have been three and a month. The same thing happened when our kid was born. Three and a half.
But what's your first memory of a non-personal event? Something in the news? Or something that happened in your town, but not personally witnessed? Perhaps discussed in front of you
For me, as I say, it is Apollo 11. Age 6
My dad always claimed he could remember his Dad and a friend discussing Peace in Our Time, and Munich, when he was 4
It's a good question and difficult to disentangle. I do remember the World Cup Final of 1970 being discussed. But only cos it was my brother's Christening the same day. 3 and a half. I definitely remember decimal currency coming in when I was four, but again that was cos of my Mam's excitement at the change she got from the shop.
That's valid and impressive! Remembering a non-personal event aged 3 and a half
The winner so far
I have a weird fugitive memory of my falling out of a cot aged 2 and something. Incredibly dim and smoky memory
And I've been told I did fall out of a cot at that time, dramatically, but it is quite possible I invented the memory to fit the story, when told later
The earliest precise memories - and they are precise, i recall other kids, and being told to sleep at weird times - are from my first days at nursery school, just turned 4
Yes, there's a very big difference between first memories, and memories of "events". I have a short but distinct memory of the hospital food, and the post op discomfort, when I went in for an eye operation at somewhere between 2 and 3 years old.
Nursery school first day, quite distinctly. And the fact that they handed out jelly babies on the children's birthdays.
Weirdly I have a memory of music disturbing me in my bedroom and having to go sleep with my baby brother. This was the Bickershaw Festival of May 1972 when I would be 5. I have no memory of walking with Mam and Dad to see the Grateful Dead on the Sunday. (It was only across a couple of fields). Apparently they played for five hours.
I've got stoner friends - Deadheads - who have been to 100 Grateful Dead concerts and can't remember one minute of them
Indeed it's likely Jerry Garcia himself could not recall any of his own gigs in his later years
So I think that's kinda the point, and you're in excellent company
My ex has no memory whatsoever of seeing the Chemical Brothers at the Heavenly Social. She would have been 25. Utter astonishment when told years later. But that was for completely different reasons.
Ipsos Holyrood list voting with the big Green surge SNP: 26% Labour: 22% Reform UK: 16% Scottish Green Party: 15% Conservatives: 10% Liberal Democrats: 8% Alba Party: 2% Other: 1%
I have a memory of my parents shipping me off to my Aunt's for an end of the Sixties Party on New year's Eve. I would have been three and a month. The same thing happened when our kid was born. Three and a half.
But what's your first memory of a non-personal event? Something in the news? Or something that happened in your town, but not personally witnessed? Perhaps discussed in front of you
For me, as I say, it is Apollo 11. Age 6
My dad always claimed he could remember his Dad and a friend discussing Peace in Our Time, and Munich, when he was 4
It's a good question and difficult to disentangle. I do remember the World Cup Final of 1970 being discussed. But only cos it was my brother's Christening the same day. 3 and a half. I definitely remember decimal currency coming in when I was four, but again that was cos of my Mam's excitement at the change she got from the shop.
That's valid and impressive! Remembering a non-personal event aged 3 and a half
The winner so far
I have a weird fugitive memory of my falling out of a cot aged 2 and something. Incredibly dim and smoky memory
And I've been told I did fall out of a cot at that time, dramatically, but it is quite possible I invented the memory to fit the story, when told later
The earliest precise memories - and they are precise, i recall other kids, and being told to sleep at weird times - are from my first days at nursery school, just turned 4
Walking to my first day at school, aged 4 years 10 months. There was heavy snow (January 66) and I literally followed in my father's footsteps.
It still feels fresh when we were losing the generation that actually fought (like Harry Patch). We will be doing the same for WW2 soon.
I've just been checking the stats. There are maybe 1000-2000 people, worldwide, born before the Somme
But living "memory" is a different matter. To "remember" the Somme you'd have to be at least 5 years old when it happened, given that 5 is roughly the age our first fixed memories begin, albeit hazily
There are just 17 people worldwide old enough to "remember" the Somme
The very oldest person on the planet is an Englishwoman, Ethel Caterham, born August 1909, so she would have been almost 7 when the Somme happened. Definitely old enough to recall it, if anyone in England chose to tell her as a little girl
I remember the Falklands distinctly, including the return of the Canberra along the channel (from Seaton). I was 9.
Before that? Not much.
I remember watching the results of the 1970 general election, when I was eight, and the weekend of Bloody Sunday the following year, when we arrived in Belfast, on the way to an unfortunately timed summer holiday to S Ireland.
I remember the Queen's silver Jubilee in 1977, when I was four. The school/nursery I had just started at had a party with bunting, and it was all very exciting!
You can see the fear in their faces and understandably so. I wonder how many survived the day.
Thank god our generations have never had to go through anything like that.
Tolkien’s active military career only lasted three months, but it must have been three months of hell, on the Somme.
Better that, though, than being commanded by Cadorna on the Isonzo, or one of the Russian or Austrian idiots on the Eastern Front.
The Somme was terrifying, but I'm not sure being on the battlefield of Waterloo 100 years earlier was much better.
Absolutely peak PB question...
One day on the Somme, one day at Waterloo, or one day at Agincourt?
The Somme... probably. Over a fifth of the British forces ended up killed or missing, but it was fought over nearly five months, so unless your dice rolled really badly, you'd have a very good chance of surviving unscathed. The first day of the Somme, though, accounted for over half of those casualties
c.10% fatalities at Agincourt, for the English, and c.10% "killed and missing" at Waterloo - so a damn close-run thing between those two options.
10% at Agincourt is not my recollection - where is that from?
Total casualties were 25% in Wellington’s army.
Not a criticism of you but I always find the use of “casualties” to be really frustrating as it lumps together dead and injured.
I know you are a historian but do you also not find it a bit of a misleading grouping?
The figure of dead is v important as they can never fight again, then there will be those badly injured who can never fight again but might be able to contribute again to the military or society (the old invalid regiments who manned a lot of British fortifications for example) and those injured who could eventually return to the front line.
Should we not distinguish between dead and injured rather than lump them together?
We rarely have detailed information. But, it’s a fair rule of thumb that about 50% of the wounded would succumb to sepsis, prior to antibiotics.
War (for obvious reasons) tends to be analysed from a distance, as regards both time and location. I often wonder how it would be if it were covered in real time technicolour detail, with no censorship, no allowance for viewer squeamishness, no detachment, no euphemisms, no geopolitical sheen, just presented as it is in all of its horror. Would there be less of it? I reckon there probably would.
I think we’d get used to it, the same way the Mongols got used to killing vast numbers of people in person, rather than at a distance.
Not so sure. People are moved by immediacy and immersion. The shock of reality if you like. You can see this when certain images or bits of footage cut through where a thousand pieces of analysis or rhetoric do not.
There's a quote by somebody that goes something like "if people really knew what war is like there'd never be another one."
Wishful exaggeration, obviously, but I think the point it makes is a good one.
I have a memory of my parents shipping me off to my Aunt's for an end of the Sixties Party on New year's Eve. I would have been three and a month. The same thing happened when our kid was born. Three and a half.
But what's your first memory of a non-personal event? Something in the news? Or something that happened in your town, but not personally witnessed? Perhaps discussed in front of you
For me, as I say, it is Apollo 11. Age 6
My dad always claimed he could remember his Dad and a friend discussing Peace in Our Time, and Munich, when he was 4
I can remember watching the 1980 FA Cup final when I was 5, and that years European Championships.
As for memories relating to me, I can remember cutting my hand open outside my play school (now a mosque) in Elm Park when I was probably 4, and vague recollections of Upminster duckpond when I’d have been about 2 or 3
I have a vague memory of mum being worried about a grass fire in the summer of 1976 near home and I remember my first day of school - I cut my knee and cried because I got blood on my new socks.
It still feels fresh when we were losing the generation that actually fought (like Harry Patch). We will be doing the same for WW2 soon.
I've just been checking the stats. There are maybe 1000-2000 people, worldwide, born before the Somme
But living "memory" is a different matter. To "remember" the Somme you'd have to be at least 5 years old when it happened, given that 5 is roughly the age our first fixed memories begin, albeit hazily
There are just 17 people worldwide old enough to "remember" the Somme
The very oldest person on the planet is an Englishwoman, Ethel Caterham, born August 1909, so she would have been almost 7 when the Somme happened. Definitely old enough to recall it, if anyone in England chose to tell her as a little girl
I remember the Falklands distinctly, including the return of the Canberra along the channel (from Seaton). I was 9.
Before that? Not much.
I remember watching the results of the 1970 general election, when I was eight, and the weekend of Bloody Sunday the following year, when we arrived in Belfast, on the way to an unfortunately timed summer holiday to S Ireland.
I remember the Queen's silver Jubilee in 1977, when I was four. The school/nursery I had just started at had a party with bunting, and it was all very exciting!
I remember waving to her maj as she drove past for the silver jubbler. I think she winked and did the 'call me' thing with her hand
I have a memory of my parents shipping me off to my Aunt's for an end of the Sixties Party on New year's Eve. I would have been three and a month. The same thing happened when our kid was born. Three and a half.
But what's your first memory of a non-personal event? Something in the news? Or something that happened in your town, but not personally witnessed? Perhaps discussed in front of you
For me, as I say, it is Apollo 11. Age 6
My dad always claimed he could remember his Dad and a friend discussing Peace in Our Time, and Munich, when he was 4
It's a good question and difficult to disentangle. I do remember the World Cup Final of 1970 being discussed. But only cos it was my brother's Christening the same day. 3 and a half. I definitely remember decimal currency coming in when I was four, but again that was cos of my Mam's excitement at the change she got from the shop.
That's valid and impressive! Remembering a non-personal event aged 3 and a half
The winner so far
I have a weird fugitive memory of my falling out of a cot aged 2 and something. Incredibly dim and smoky memory
And I've been told I did fall out of a cot at that time, dramatically, but it is quite possible I invented the memory to fit the story, when told later
The earliest precise memories - and they are precise, i recall other kids, and being told to sleep at weird times - are from my first days at nursery school, just turned 4
Yes, there's a very big difference between first memories, and memories of "events". I have a short but distinct memory of the hospital food, and the post op discomfort, when I went in for an eye operation at somewhere between 2 and 3 years old.
Nursery school first day, quite distinctly. And the fact that they handed out jelly babies on the children's birthdays.
Yep. Nursery school. That's still there. Specifically being put to bed in the afternoon and my blanket being blue with a little red airplane stitched on.
"Under the terms of the deal, Mauritius will lease Diego Garcia to the United Kingdom for the modest sum of £101m a year, plus development monies for Mauritius. Such is the windfall for Mauritius that 81 per cent of its workforce will no longer have to pay any income tax.
There is a lot of truth in Mr Sands’s words. It is, for instance, difficult to imagine that he would be feted in Mauritius (which gave him citizenship by special ministerial decree a few years ago, ostensibly so that he could dodge Covid restrictions in Germany, though he was happy enough to keep it afterwards) had he acted against that country.
Certainly, Mauritius would not have conferred on him its highest national honour, carrying with it the title of “The Honourable”.
In fact, under a 2021 Mauritian law banning “misrepresenting the sovereignty of Mauritius over any part of its territory”, The Honourable Mr Sands would potentially face a decade in a Mauritian prison had he represented Britain against Mauritius, or written on behalf of the UK government in support of British sovereignty over the Chagos.
As he admitted to the British parliament, Mr Sands was involved in the drafting of the 2021 law, something he did not think was incompatible with his involvement in English PEN."
What distinguishes this from treachery?
Nothing
People like Mr Sands will only stop doing shit like this when there is a very heavy price to pay, and it is paid
Careful, saying Jewish Brits are traitors who will have to pay a heavy price could get you into hot water.
I have a memory of my parents shipping me off to my Aunt's for an end of the Sixties Party on New year's Eve. I would have been three and a month. The same thing happened when our kid was born. Three and a half.
But what's your first memory of a non-personal event? Something in the news? Or something that happened in your town, but not personally witnessed? Perhaps discussed in front of you
For me, as I say, it is Apollo 11. Age 6
My dad always claimed he could remember his Dad and a friend discussing Peace in Our Time, and Munich, when he was 4
It's a good question and difficult to disentangle. I do remember the World Cup Final of 1970 being discussed. But only cos it was my brother's Christening the same day. 3 and a half. I definitely remember decimal currency coming in when I was four, but again that was cos of my Mam's excitement at the change she got from the shop.
That's valid and impressive! Remembering a non-personal event aged 3 and a half
The winner so far
I have a weird fugitive memory of my falling out of a cot aged 2 and something. Incredibly dim and smoky memory
And I've been told I did fall out of a cot at that time, dramatically, but it is quite possible I invented the memory to fit the story, when told later
The earliest precise memories - and they are precise, i recall other kids, and being told to sleep at weird times - are from my first days at nursery school, just turned 4
Yes, there's a very big difference between first memories, and memories of "events". I have a short but distinct memory of the hospital food, and the post op discomfort, when I went in for an eye operation at somewhere between 2 and 3 years old.
Nursery school first day, quite distinctly. And the fact that they handed out jelly babies on the children's birthdays.
Yep. Nursery school. That's still there. Specifically being put to bed in the afternoon and my blanket being blue with a little red airplane stitched on.
All together now ... Awwww
That’s exactly my memory! Being told to go to sleep in the afternoon and sort of rebelling coz it was weird
It still feels fresh when we were losing the generation that actually fought (like Harry Patch). We will be doing the same for WW2 soon.
I've just been checking the stats. There are maybe 1000-2000 people, worldwide, born before the Somme
But living "memory" is a different matter. To "remember" the Somme you'd have to be at least 5 years old when it happened, given that 5 is roughly the age our first fixed memories begin, albeit hazily
There are just 17 people worldwide old enough to "remember" the Somme
The very oldest person on the planet is an Englishwoman, Ethel Caterham, born August 1909, so she would have been almost 7 when the Somme happened. Definitely old enough to recall it, if anyone in England chose to tell her as a little girl
I remember the Falklands distinctly, including the return of the Canberra along the channel (from Seaton). I was 9.
Before that? Not much.
I remember watching the results of the 1970 general election, when I was eight, and the weekend of Bloody Sunday the following year, when we arrived in Belfast, on the way to an unfortunately timed summer holiday to S Ireland.
I remember the Queen's silver Jubilee in 1977, when I was four. The school/nursery I had just started at had a party with bunting, and it was all very exciting!
I remember waving to her maj as she drove past for the silver jubbler. I think she winked and did the 'call me' thing with her hand
The 50th anniversary in 2002 was even more memorable for me. My ex got *very* drunk, broke a councilor's toilet, and then went missing in the evening. She was found on the local war memorial, wearing just a wooly jumper, with a stuffed wombat sticking out of her cleavage.
Burnham renewing his attack on Welfare Bill now saying regardless of your view of concessions, 8 days to committee and third reading is all wrong and too rushed , trying to get 'process' rebels on side too
It still feels fresh when we were losing the generation that actually fought (like Harry Patch). We will be doing the same for WW2 soon.
I've just been checking the stats. There are maybe 1000-2000 people, worldwide, born before the Somme
But living "memory" is a different matter. To "remember" the Somme you'd have to be at least 5 years old when it happened, given that 5 is roughly the age our first fixed memories begin, albeit hazily
There are just 17 people worldwide old enough to "remember" the Somme
The very oldest person on the planet is an Englishwoman, Ethel Caterham, born August 1909, so she would have been almost 7 when the Somme happened. Definitely old enough to recall it, if anyone in England chose to tell her as a little girl
I remember the Falklands distinctly, including the return of the Canberra along the channel (from Seaton). I was 9.
Before that? Not much.
I remember watching the results of the 1970 general election, when I was eight, and the weekend of Bloody Sunday the following year, when we arrived in Belfast, on the way to an unfortunately timed summer holiday to S Ireland.
I remember the Queen's silver Jubilee in 1977, when I was four. The school/nursery I had just started at had a party with bunting, and it was all very exciting!
I remember waving to her maj as she drove past for the silver jubbler. I think she winked and did the 'call me' thing with her hand
The 50th anniversary in 2002 was even more memorable for me. My ex got *very* drunk, broke a councilor's toilet, and then went missing in the evening. She was found on the local war memorial, wearing just a wooly jumper, with a stuffed wombat sticking out of her cleavage.
Trump: We'll have to take a look. We might have to put DOGE on Elon. You know what DOGE is? The monster that might have to go back and eat Elon. Wouldn’t that be terrible? He gets a lot of subsidies.
I have a memory of my parents shipping me off to my Aunt's for an end of the Sixties Party on New year's Eve. I would have been three and a month. The same thing happened when our kid was born. Three and a half.
But what's your first memory of a non-personal event? Something in the news? Or something that happened in your town, but not personally witnessed? Perhaps discussed in front of you
For me, as I say, it is Apollo 11. Age 6
My dad always claimed he could remember his Dad and a friend discussing Peace in Our Time, and Munich, when he was 4
I'm too young to remember the bombing itself, but my earliest recollection of TV news is the investigation into Lockerbie. The image of the cockpit was on TV a lot.
My first memories of the wider world are sporting, I definitely have a primary recollection of the 1978 FA Cup Final (but oddly not 77 given United won) and of parts of the 1978 World Cup, the ticker tape in the Argentina-Holland final is especially vivid.
In terms of world events, I'm sure I knew of the Winter of Discontent, but no TV image comes to mind from primary memory, and Thatcher's becoming PM I think I recall from images since. The definitive one I absolutely know I saw at the time was the Iranian Embassy Siege, and I was nearly 10. I also recall the ITN job losses ticker from quite early on.
I wonder if the family kept away from the news at the time, the Woolworth's fire was in that time window and Dad had been treated at the scene and I knew he'd been involved in something, but I didn't know directly of that as a news event.
An iconic one would be the mechanical Football Results Teleprinter (pre-vidiprinter) on Grandstand, but again that is a time period, not an event.
Just Grandstand in general. I have a memory from infant school days of a late score announced between Manchester United and Manchester City, and for some time afterwards thinking they were the only two football clubs (plausible since I knew noone who supported anyone else). But I never remember a Saturday when Grandstand was not on, in my own house or anyone else's, no matter how inconsequential the eventbeing televised. I wasn't the highlight of the day, but it was a solid five hours of good telly. I miss it often and surprisingly strongly. There is no five hour period of terrestrial telly currently as good or as unirritating.
Reform-bashers often characterise its voters as wanting to turn the clock back to the 1950s. (Often 1955, specifically, oddly.) I'm sure they don't, really. But the nostalgic, powerful yearning I have for Grandstand in the 1980s makes me empathise. For five hours, absolutely everything was right with the world. I had played rugby in the morning and my dad had played golf. Lunch would be burgers, or perhaps bacon sandwiches, or pasties, and a glass of milk. And we would sit companionably and disinterestedly - me, dad, mum and the cat - in front of a rugby league match, with sporadic interruptions telling us the scores of football matches we didn't care about. Some light dozing might take place. And then the vidiprinter, and the almost religious intonation of the classifieds. And shortly it would be time for tea. It was brilliant. Gone, all gone.
Very interesting mini video segment from Evan Edinger, with a few maps of the different "40 minute" travel range in London by walking, cycling. It reads across to mobility aids, where there is a permissive (ie safe) environment.
On recent polling; Labour are having a terrible time but are not losing further ground; Reform have peaked for now and are not gaining from Labour's woes. Four years to go.
I think the bookies are right in making Labour favourite for most seats. Such a result almost certainly excludes a Reform/Reform led government.
It is not easy (though possible) - to imagine Labour being worse in the next four years than they have been so far.
Payroll/public sector vote, benefits class vote, liberal middle class vote, BAME vote/stop Farage vote/young people vote/Tory vote splitting Reform + me should see Labour home.
Spanner in this works: the biggest by far is a Tory/Reform electoral pact.
Bet accordingly. DYOR.
Even if Labour won most seats in a hung parliament they would still need LD and maybe SNP backing to govern. The LDs and SNP have both made clear the family farm and family business tax must be scrapped for starters
You need to hope that Swinney and Forbes aren’t replaced by left wingers before the next GE.
Even then the LDs would still be opposed to the family farms tax and the SNP likely would remain so too given the rural seats the SNP hold
It's sweet that you think that the "farms tax" will be a key issue in 2029 coalition negotiations.
It will, if Reform or Reform and the Tories win the family farms tax would of course be scrapped immediately.
If the LDs and SNP hold the balance of power they could refuse to give Labour confidence and supply unless it is repealed as well given both hold significant numbers of rural seats where it is the No 1 issue now
It's sweet that you think that Reform &/or the Tories would scrap the "farms tax" immediately.
Quite likely they will scrap it. The so-called "farms tax" is really a tax avoidance scheme for millionaires. Reform and the Tories are very keen to benefit their hedge fund pay masters. Different matter it was struggling families.
I have a memory of my parents shipping me off to my Aunt's for an end of the Sixties Party on New year's Eve. I would have been three and a month. The same thing happened when our kid was born. Three and a half.
But what's your first memory of a non-personal event? Something in the news? Or something that happened in your town, but not personally witnessed? Perhaps discussed in front of you
For me, as I say, it is Apollo 11. Age 6
My dad always claimed he could remember his Dad and a friend discussing Peace in Our Time, and Munich, when he was 4
It's a good question and difficult to disentangle. I do remember the World Cup Final of 1970 being discussed. But only cos it was my brother's Christening the same day. 3 and a half. I definitely remember decimal currency coming in when I was four, but again that was cos of my Mam's excitement at the change she got from the shop.
That's valid and impressive! Remembering a non-personal event aged 3 and a half
The winner so far
I have a weird fugitive memory of my falling out of a cot aged 2 and something. Incredibly dim and smoky memory
And I've been told I did fall out of a cot at that time, dramatically, but it is quite possible I invented the memory to fit the story, when told later
The earliest precise memories - and they are precise, i recall other kids, and being told to sleep at weird times - are from my first days at nursery school, just turned 4
Yes, there's a very big difference between first memories, and memories of "events". I have a short but distinct memory of the hospital food, and the post op discomfort, when I went in for an eye operation at somewhere between 2 and 3 years old.
Nursery school first day, quite distinctly. And the fact that they handed out jelly babies on the children's birthdays.
Yep. Nursery school. That's still there. Specifically being put to bed in the afternoon and my blanket being blue with a little red airplane stitched on.
All together now ... Awwww
That’s exactly my memory! Being told to go to sleep in the afternoon and sort of rebelling coz it was weird
Listen With Mother; BBC Home service, about 1.45pm. The first movement of Faure's Dolly Suite is indelibly fixed to this in me, and many of my generation - born 1954. And 'Are you sitting comfortably?'
I have a memory of my parents shipping me off to my Aunt's for an end of the Sixties Party on New year's Eve. I would have been three and a month. The same thing happened when our kid was born. Three and a half.
But what's your first memory of a non-personal event? Something in the news? Or something that happened in your town, but not personally witnessed? Perhaps discussed in front of you
For me, as I say, it is Apollo 11. Age 6
My dad always claimed he could remember his Dad and a friend discussing Peace in Our Time, and Munich, when he was 4
It's a good question and difficult to disentangle. I do remember the World Cup Final of 1970 being discussed. But only cos it was my brother's Christening the same day. 3 and a half. I definitely remember decimal currency coming in when I was four, but again that was cos of my Mam's excitement at the change she got from the shop.
That's valid and impressive! Remembering a non-personal event aged 3 and a half
The winner so far
I have a weird fugitive memory of my falling out of a cot aged 2 and something. Incredibly dim and smoky memory
And I've been told I did fall out of a cot at that time, dramatically, but it is quite possible I invented the memory to fit the story, when told later
The earliest precise memories - and they are precise, i recall other kids, and being told to sleep at weird times - are from my first days at nursery school, just turned 4
Yes, there's a very big difference between first memories, and memories of "events". I have a short but distinct memory of the hospital food, and the post op discomfort, when I went in for an eye operation at somewhere between 2 and 3 years old.
Nursery school first day, quite distinctly. And the fact that they handed out jelly babies on the children's birthdays.
Yep. Nursery school. That's still there. Specifically being put to bed in the afternoon and my blanket being blue with a little red airplane stitched on.
All together now ... Awwww
That’s exactly my memory! Being told to go to sleep in the afternoon and sort of rebelling coz it was weird
Can you picture your blanket though? I bet you can't.
I have a memory of my parents shipping me off to my Aunt's for an end of the Sixties Party on New year's Eve. I would have been three and a month. The same thing happened when our kid was born. Three and a half.
But what's your first memory of a non-personal event? Something in the news? Or something that happened in your town, but not personally witnessed? Perhaps discussed in front of you
For me, as I say, it is Apollo 11. Age 6
My dad always claimed he could remember his Dad and a friend discussing Peace in Our Time, and Munich, when he was 4
It's a good question and difficult to disentangle. I do remember the World Cup Final of 1970 being discussed. But only cos it was my brother's Christening the same day. 3 and a half. I definitely remember decimal currency coming in when I was four, but again that was cos of my Mam's excitement at the change she got from the shop.
That's valid and impressive! Remembering a non-personal event aged 3 and a half
The winner so far
I have a weird fugitive memory of my falling out of a cot aged 2 and something. Incredibly dim and smoky memory
And I've been told I did fall out of a cot at that time, dramatically, but it is quite possible I invented the memory to fit the story, when told later
The earliest precise memories - and they are precise, i recall other kids, and being told to sleep at weird times - are from my first days at nursery school, just turned 4
Yes, there's a very big difference between first memories, and memories of "events". I have a short but distinct memory of the hospital food, and the post op discomfort, when I went in for an eye operation at somewhere between 2 and 3 years old.
Nursery school first day, quite distinctly. And the fact that they handed out jelly babies on the children's birthdays.
Yep. Nursery school. That's still there. Specifically being put to bed in the afternoon and my blanket being blue with a little red airplane stitched on.
All together now ... Awwww
We played outside in the afternoon "What time is it, Mr Wolf ?" *
I have a memory of my parents shipping me off to my Aunt's for an end of the Sixties Party on New year's Eve. I would have been three and a month. The same thing happened when our kid was born. Three and a half.
But what's your first memory of a non-personal event? Something in the news? Or something that happened in your town, but not personally witnessed? Perhaps discussed in front of you
For me, as I say, it is Apollo 11. Age 6
My dad always claimed he could remember his Dad and a friend discussing Peace in Our Time, and Munich, when he was 4
Yes, that too. I was thinking of overtly political events, so had excluded that.
I had an Airfix kit of the Lunar module. I think my older brother got the Saturn V...
I was born in 1975. I certainly had no memory of male Prime Ministers before Major and remember thinking the concept an musing oddity when it was pointed out to me aged about 6 that such things were possible. I think I remember the party on the playing field at the back of the estate for the silver jubilee when I had just turned two, though I am probably conflating it with the same thing for the ChazzleDizzle in 1981, which I definitely remember. I certainly remember the Falklands War. My first political memory is off Michael Foot's wife being knocked over by a low-hanging branch in an open-topped bus. My first sporting memory is of the foul by Harald Schumacher on Patrick Battison in the 1982 Football World Cup. Even then, I remember thinking it a fundamentally stupid sport. My first cultural memory is of my parents listening to Abba in the car, though my first I would claim of my own is my fondness for the Vapor's 'Turning Japanese'. I can't imagine how I accessed this. Not necessarily a massively appropriate song for a five year old. I have numerous snippets of memories from 2, 3, 4 years old - but they are like tiny context-free vignettes, viewed through a keyhole: seeing a thunderstorm, sitting in the paddling pool on a hot day (probably in the summer of 77), arguing over the lyrics to 'all things bright and beautiful' (I was right, btw), children's television, playgroups. Toys. Trains (and suddenly, unbidden, the smell of trains in the 70s...)
If, as a writer or moviemaker, one could capture that weird "keyhole" effect of super-early childhood memories, it would be a powerful thing
We are actually getting something close to that with this scattergun of very small children's views of life in the 60s, 70s and 80s right now. I am enjoying it.
I have a memory of my parents shipping me off to my Aunt's for an end of the Sixties Party on New year's Eve. I would have been three and a month. The same thing happened when our kid was born. Three and a half.
But what's your first memory of a non-personal event? Something in the news? Or something that happened in your town, but not personally witnessed? Perhaps discussed in front of you
For me, as I say, it is Apollo 11. Age 6
My dad always claimed he could remember his Dad and a friend discussing Peace in Our Time, and Munich, when he was 4
Arsenal beating Liverpool, on the telly. Looking at https://www.11v11.com/teams/liverpool/tab/opposingTeams/opposition/Arsenal/ I reckon if must have been 87 league cup - Id have been 5 which is about right, other wins for Arsenal are too early or too late. My dad hated Liverpool with a passion and this was one of the first games I really paid attention too, so I became an Arsenal fan (probably trying to copy my dad - he was actually a Newcastle fan, but I guess was cheering on Arsenal that day). Around a similar time, my grandma got a machine-knitted Arsenal top at a jumble sale, simply because she thought it was nice and colourful - red and yellow (not sure why yellow!) and white and black. Cemented my allegiance and it was my favourite top until it was far too small for me.
Personal things, it's the car breaking down on the Isle of Wight and us having to get a bus to the beach instead, when I was about 3. And also my grandma eating weird stick things for breakfast on the same holiday (All Bran).
Loathe to get into the 'Chagos is the end of Labour' thing with the Welfare Bill BUT Its extremely perilous 1) it falls and they pay the chaos, failure and division premium or 2) it passes. But its 'not a Labour thing to do' - its damaging because its like Farage taking us back into the EU or the SNP voting to affirm the Union for the next 50 years. Its not what anyone supporting them expects or really wants
Hmm. 31 SNP want Scotland to Leave, 18 Reform want it to be kicked out, 22 Lab will copy Reform in a servile manner, 10 Con will answer it in four years after a review with Powerpoints, 9 LD don't care either way, and 10 Green don't care provided it has a penis.
I have a memory of my parents shipping me off to my Aunt's for an end of the Sixties Party on New year's Eve. I would have been three and a month. The same thing happened when our kid was born. Three and a half.
But what's your first memory of a non-personal event? Something in the news? Or something that happened in your town, but not personally witnessed? Perhaps discussed in front of you
For me, as I say, it is Apollo 11. Age 6
My dad always claimed he could remember his Dad and a friend discussing Peace in Our Time, and Munich, when he was 4
It's a good question and difficult to disentangle. I do remember the World Cup Final of 1970 being discussed. But only cos it was my brother's Christening the same day. 3 and a half. I definitely remember decimal currency coming in when I was four, but again that was cos of my Mam's excitement at the change she got from the shop.
That's valid and impressive! Remembering a non-personal event aged 3 and a half
The winner so far
I have a weird fugitive memory of my falling out of a cot aged 2 and something. Incredibly dim and smoky memory
And I've been told I did fall out of a cot at that time, dramatically, but it is quite possible I invented the memory to fit the story, when told later
The earliest precise memories - and they are precise, i recall other kids, and being told to sleep at weird times - are from my first days at nursery school, just turned 4
Yes, there's a very big difference between first memories, and memories of "events". I have a short but distinct memory of the hospital food, and the post op discomfort, when I went in for an eye operation at somewhere between 2 and 3 years old.
Nursery school first day, quite distinctly. And the fact that they handed out jelly babies on the children's birthdays.
Yep. Nursery school. That's still there. Specifically being put to bed in the afternoon and my blanket being blue with a little red airplane stitched on.
All together now ... Awwww
That’s exactly my memory! Being told to go to sleep in the afternoon and sort of rebelling coz it was weird
Can you picture your blanket though? I bet you can't.
After all the Leon/Kinabalu arguments over the years, is this the one which finally blows? ;-)
Loathe to get into the 'Chagos is the end of Labour' thing with the Welfare Bill BUT Its extremely perilous 1) it falls and they pay the chaos, failure and division premium or 2) it passes. But its 'not a Labour thing to do' - its damaging because its like Farage taking us back into the EU or the SNP voting to affirm the Union for the next 50 years. Its not what anyone supporting them expects or really wants
It’s a very big, ugly fight about an issue that is very core Labour.
Can’t see how it ends well for the current Labour headship. They could manage “no more damage” - but I doubt it.
You can see the fear in their faces and understandably so. I wonder how many survived the day.
Thank god our generations have never had to go through anything like that.
Tolkien’s active military career only lasted three months, but it must have been three months of hell, on the Somme.
Better that, though, than being commanded by Cadorna on the Isonzo, or one of the Russian or Austrian idiots on the Eastern Front.
The Somme was terrifying, but I'm not sure being on the battlefield of Waterloo 100 years earlier was much better.
Absolutely peak PB question...
One day on the Somme, one day at Waterloo, or one day at Agincourt?
The Somme... probably. Over a fifth of the British forces ended up killed or missing, but it was fought over nearly five months, so unless your dice rolled really badly, you'd have a very good chance of surviving unscathed. The first day of the Somme, though, accounted for over half of those casualties
c.10% fatalities at Agincourt, for the English, and c.10% "killed and missing" at Waterloo - so a damn close-run thing between those two options.
10% at Agincourt is not my recollection - where is that from?
Total casualties were 25% in Wellington’s army.
Not a criticism of you but I always find the use of “casualties” to be really frustrating as it lumps together dead and injured.
I know you are a historian but do you also not find it a bit of a misleading grouping?
The figure of dead is v important as they can never fight again, then there will be those badly injured who can never fight again but might be able to contribute again to the military or society (the old invalid regiments who manned a lot of British fortifications for example) and those injured who could eventually return to the front line.
Should we not distinguish between dead and injured rather than lump them together?
We rarely have detailed information. But, it’s a fair rule of thumb that about 50% of the wounded would succumb to sepsis, prior to antibiotics.
War (for obvious reasons) tends to be analysed from a distance, as regards both time and location. I often wonder how it would be if it were covered in real time technicolour detail, with no censorship, no allowance for viewer squeamishness, no detachment, no euphemisms, no geopolitical sheen, just presented as it is in all of its horror. Would there be less of it? I reckon there probably would.
I think we’d get used to it, the same way the Mongols got used to killing vast numbers of people in person, rather than at a distance.
It's worse. We'd like it.
I am shocked at how people get off at extremely hardcore violence, sadism, depravity and abuse, but they do.
Some stuff, personally, I just don't watch to watch. And wish I hadn't.
I have a memory of my parents shipping me off to my Aunt's for an end of the Sixties Party on New year's Eve. I would have been three and a month. The same thing happened when our kid was born. Three and a half.
But what's your first memory of a non-personal event? Something in the news? Or something that happened in your town, but not personally witnessed? Perhaps discussed in front of you
For me, as I say, it is Apollo 11. Age 6
My dad always claimed he could remember his Dad and a friend discussing Peace in Our Time, and Munich, when he was 4
It's a good question and difficult to disentangle. I do remember the World Cup Final of 1970 being discussed. But only cos it was my brother's Christening the same day. 3 and a half. I definitely remember decimal currency coming in when I was four, but again that was cos of my Mam's excitement at the change she got from the shop.
That's valid and impressive! Remembering a non-personal event aged 3 and a half
The winner so far
I have a weird fugitive memory of my falling out of a cot aged 2 and something. Incredibly dim and smoky memory
And I've been told I did fall out of a cot at that time, dramatically, but it is quite possible I invented the memory to fit the story, when told later
The earliest precise memories - and they are precise, i recall other kids, and being told to sleep at weird times - are from my first days at nursery school, just turned 4
Yes, there's a very big difference between first memories, and memories of "events". I have a short but distinct memory of the hospital food, and the post op discomfort, when I went in for an eye operation at somewhere between 2 and 3 years old.
Nursery school first day, quite distinctly. And the fact that they handed out jelly babies on the children's birthdays.
Yep. Nursery school. That's still there. Specifically being put to bed in the afternoon and my blanket being blue with a little red airplane stitched on.
All together now ... Awwww
That’s exactly my memory! Being told to go to sleep in the afternoon and sort of rebelling coz it was weird
Can you picture your blanket though? I bet you can't.
After all the Leon/Kinabalu arguments over the years, is this the one which finally blows? ;-)
He's trying to muscle in on my earliest memory. Make it less special.
I have a memory of my parents shipping me off to my Aunt's for an end of the Sixties Party on New year's Eve. I would have been three and a month. The same thing happened when our kid was born. Three and a half.
But what's your first memory of a non-personal event? Something in the news? Or something that happened in your town, but not personally witnessed? Perhaps discussed in front of you
For me, as I say, it is Apollo 11. Age 6
My dad always claimed he could remember his Dad and a friend discussing Peace in Our Time, and Munich, when he was 4
It's a good question and difficult to disentangle. I do remember the World Cup Final of 1970 being discussed. But only cos it was my brother's Christening the same day. 3 and a half. I definitely remember decimal currency coming in when I was four, but again that was cos of my Mam's excitement at the change she got from the shop.
That's valid and impressive! Remembering a non-personal event aged 3 and a half
The winner so far
I have a weird fugitive memory of my falling out of a cot aged 2 and something. Incredibly dim and smoky memory
And I've been told I did fall out of a cot at that time, dramatically, but it is quite possible I invented the memory to fit the story, when told later
The earliest precise memories - and they are precise, i recall other kids, and being told to sleep at weird times - are from my first days at nursery school, just turned 4
Yes, there's a very big difference between first memories, and memories of "events". I have a short but distinct memory of the hospital food, and the post op discomfort, when I went in for an eye operation at somewhere between 2 and 3 years old.
Nursery school first day, quite distinctly. And the fact that they handed out jelly babies on the children's birthdays.
Yep. Nursery school. That's still there. Specifically being put to bed in the afternoon and my blanket being blue with a little red airplane stitched on.
All together now ... Awwww
That’s exactly my memory! Being told to go to sleep in the afternoon and sort of rebelling coz it was weird
Can you picture your blanket though? I bet you can't.
No. But I did write a poem about it - When I Kiss Elizabeth - making me probably the youngest published poet in the world (age 5). The poem is discussed in detail as an example of extraordinarily precocious sexuality (and literary talent) by Peter Redgrove in “The Black Goddess and the Sixth Sense”
I have a memory of my parents shipping me off to my Aunt's for an end of the Sixties Party on New year's Eve. I would have been three and a month. The same thing happened when our kid was born. Three and a half.
But what's your first memory of a non-personal event? Something in the news? Or something that happened in your town, but not personally witnessed? Perhaps discussed in front of you
For me, as I say, it is Apollo 11. Age 6
My dad always claimed he could remember his Dad and a friend discussing Peace in Our Time, and Munich, when he was 4
It's a good question and difficult to disentangle. I do remember the World Cup Final of 1970 being discussed. But only cos it was my brother's Christening the same day. 3 and a half. I definitely remember decimal currency coming in when I was four, but again that was cos of my Mam's excitement at the change she got from the shop.
That's valid and impressive! Remembering a non-personal event aged 3 and a half
The winner so far
I have a weird fugitive memory of my falling out of a cot aged 2 and something. Incredibly dim and smoky memory
And I've been told I did fall out of a cot at that time, dramatically, but it is quite possible I invented the memory to fit the story, when told later
The earliest precise memories - and they are precise, i recall other kids, and being told to sleep at weird times - are from my first days at nursery school, just turned 4
Yes, there's a very big difference between first memories, and memories of "events". I have a short but distinct memory of the hospital food, and the post op discomfort, when I went in for an eye operation at somewhere between 2 and 3 years old.
Nursery school first day, quite distinctly. And the fact that they handed out jelly babies on the children's birthdays.
Yep. Nursery school. That's still there. Specifically being put to bed in the afternoon and my blanket being blue with a little red airplane stitched on.
All together now ... Awwww
That’s exactly my memory! Being told to go to sleep in the afternoon and sort of rebelling coz it was weird
Listen With Mother; BBC Home service, about 1.45pm. The first movement of Faure's Dolly Suite is indelibly fixed to this in me, and many of my generation - born 1954. And 'Are you sitting comfortably?'
I have a memory of my parents shipping me off to my Aunt's for an end of the Sixties Party on New year's Eve. I would have been three and a month. The same thing happened when our kid was born. Three and a half.
But what's your first memory of a non-personal event? Something in the news? Or something that happened in your town, but not personally witnessed? Perhaps discussed in front of you
For me, as I say, it is Apollo 11. Age 6
My dad always claimed he could remember his Dad and a friend discussing Peace in Our Time, and Munich, when he was 4
It's a good question and difficult to disentangle. I do remember the World Cup Final of 1970 being discussed. But only cos it was my brother's Christening the same day. 3 and a half. I definitely remember decimal currency coming in when I was four, but again that was cos of my Mam's excitement at the change she got from the shop.
That's valid and impressive! Remembering a non-personal event aged 3 and a half
The winner so far
I have a weird fugitive memory of my falling out of a cot aged 2 and something. Incredibly dim and smoky memory
And I've been told I did fall out of a cot at that time, dramatically, but it is quite possible I invented the memory to fit the story, when told later
The earliest precise memories - and they are precise, i recall other kids, and being told to sleep at weird times - are from my first days at nursery school, just turned 4
Yes, there's a very big difference between first memories, and memories of "events". I have a short but distinct memory of the hospital food, and the post op discomfort, when I went in for an eye operation at somewhere between 2 and 3 years old.
Nursery school first day, quite distinctly. And the fact that they handed out jelly babies on the children's birthdays.
Yep. Nursery school. That's still there. Specifically being put to bed in the afternoon and my blanket being blue with a little red airplane stitched on.
All together now ... Awwww
That’s exactly my memory! Being told to go to sleep in the afternoon and sort of rebelling coz it was weird
Can you picture your blanket though? I bet you can't.
I have a memory of my parents shipping me off to my Aunt's for an end of the Sixties Party on New year's Eve. I would have been three and a month. The same thing happened when our kid was born. Three and a half.
But what's your first memory of a non-personal event? Something in the news? Or something that happened in your town, but not personally witnessed? Perhaps discussed in front of you
For me, as I say, it is Apollo 11. Age 6
My dad always claimed he could remember his Dad and a friend discussing Peace in Our Time, and Munich, when he was 4
It's a good question and difficult to disentangle. I do remember the World Cup Final of 1970 being discussed. But only cos it was my brother's Christening the same day. 3 and a half. I definitely remember decimal currency coming in when I was four, but again that was cos of my Mam's excitement at the change she got from the shop.
That's valid and impressive! Remembering a non-personal event aged 3 and a half
The winner so far
I have a weird fugitive memory of my falling out of a cot aged 2 and something. Incredibly dim and smoky memory
And I've been told I did fall out of a cot at that time, dramatically, but it is quite possible I invented the memory to fit the story, when told later
The earliest precise memories - and they are precise, i recall other kids, and being told to sleep at weird times - are from my first days at nursery school, just turned 4
Yes, there's a very big difference between first memories, and memories of "events". I have a short but distinct memory of the hospital food, and the post op discomfort, when I went in for an eye operation at somewhere between 2 and 3 years old.
Nursery school first day, quite distinctly. And the fact that they handed out jelly babies on the children's birthdays.
Yep. Nursery school. That's still there. Specifically being put to bed in the afternoon and my blanket being blue with a little red airplane stitched on.
All together now ... Awwww
That’s exactly my memory! Being told to go to sleep in the afternoon and sort of rebelling coz it was weird
Can you picture your blanket though? I bet you can't.
After all the Leon/Kinabalu arguments over the years, is this the one which finally blows? ;-)
He's trying to muscle in on my earliest memory. Make it less special.
Watch out: next time you look, he'll be there, next to you, refusing to settle...
I have a memory of my parents shipping me off to my Aunt's for an end of the Sixties Party on New year's Eve. I would have been three and a month. The same thing happened when our kid was born. Three and a half.
But what's your first memory of a non-personal event? Something in the news? Or something that happened in your town, but not personally witnessed? Perhaps discussed in front of you
For me, as I say, it is Apollo 11. Age 6
My dad always claimed he could remember his Dad and a friend discussing Peace in Our Time, and Munich, when he was 4
Yes, that too. I was thinking of overtly political events, so had excluded that.
I had an Airfix kit of the Lunar module. I think my older brother got the Saturn V...
I was born in 1975. I certainly had no memory of male Prime Ministers before Major and remember thinking the concept an musing oddity when it was pointed out to me aged about 6 that such things were possible. I think I remember the party on the playing field at the back of the estate for the silver jubilee when I had just turned two, though I am probably conflating it with the same thing for the ChazzleDizzle in 1981, which I definitely remember. I certainly remember the Falklands War. My first political memory is off Michael Foot's wife being knocked over by a low-hanging branch in an open-topped bus. My first sporting memory is of the foul by Harald Schumacher on Patrick Battison in the 1982 Football World Cup. Even then, I remember thinking it a fundamentally stupid sport. My first cultural memory is of my parents listening to Abba in the car, though my first I would claim of my own is my fondness for the Vapor's 'Turning Japanese'. I can't imagine how I accessed this. Not necessarily a massively appropriate song for a five year old. I have numerous snippets of memories from 2, 3, 4 years old - but they are like tiny context-free vignettes, viewed through a keyhole: seeing a thunderstorm, sitting in the paddling pool on a hot day (probably in the summer of 77), arguing over the lyrics to 'all things bright and beautiful' (I was right, btw), children's television, playgroups. Toys. Trains (and suddenly, unbidden, the smell of trains in the 70s...)
If, as a writer or moviemaker, one could capture that weird "keyhole" effect of super-early childhood memories, it would be a powerful thing
We are actually getting something close to that with this scattergun of very small children's views of life in the 60s, 70s and 80s right now. I am enjoying it.
I find most of them profoundly moving
Eg “walking to school in the snow and putting my feet in my father’s snowy footprints”
These memories are intrinsically poetic. Focused on tiny but poignant and immortal details. Perhaps we are all born poets but then lose the knack over time…
I have a memory of my parents shipping me off to my Aunt's for an end of the Sixties Party on New year's Eve. I would have been three and a month. The same thing happened when our kid was born. Three and a half.
But what's your first memory of a non-personal event? Something in the news? Or something that happened in your town, but not personally witnessed? Perhaps discussed in front of you
For me, as I say, it is Apollo 11. Age 6
My dad always claimed he could remember his Dad and a friend discussing Peace in Our Time, and Munich, when he was 4
It's a good question and difficult to disentangle. I do remember the World Cup Final of 1970 being discussed. But only cos it was my brother's Christening the same day. 3 and a half. I definitely remember decimal currency coming in when I was four, but again that was cos of my Mam's excitement at the change she got from the shop.
That's valid and impressive! Remembering a non-personal event aged 3 and a half
The winner so far
I have a weird fugitive memory of my falling out of a cot aged 2 and something. Incredibly dim and smoky memory
And I've been told I did fall out of a cot at that time, dramatically, but it is quite possible I invented the memory to fit the story, when told later
The earliest precise memories - and they are precise, i recall other kids, and being told to sleep at weird times - are from my first days at nursery school, just turned 4
Yes, there's a very big difference between first memories, and memories of "events". I have a short but distinct memory of the hospital food..
Hmm. 31 SNP want Scotland to Leave, 18 Reform want it to be kicked out, 22 Lab will copy Reform in a servile manner, 10 Con will answer it in four years after a review with Powerpoints, 9 LD don't care either way, and 10 Green don't care provided it has a penis.
Hmm. 31 SNP want Scotland to Leave, 18 Reform want it to be kicked out, 22 Lab will copy Reform in a servile manner, 10 Con will answer it in four years after a review with Powerpoints, 9 LD don't care either way, and 10 Green don't care provided it has a penis.
The poll has an independence question.
Yes 52% No 48%
PB told me Yes being in the lead was just a proxy for the Tories' unpopularity. Must be a proxy for Labour's unpopularity now
The U.S. Department of Justice has begun to prioritize stripping naturalized Americans of their citizenship when charged with crimes, according to a recent memo.
You can see the fear in their faces and understandably so. I wonder how many survived the day.
Thank god our generations have never had to go through anything like that.
Tolkien’s active military career only lasted three months, but it must have been three months of hell, on the Somme.
Better that, though, than being commanded by Cadorna on the Isonzo, or one of the Russian or Austrian idiots on the Eastern Front.
The Somme was terrifying, but I'm not sure being on the battlefield of Waterloo 100 years earlier was much better.
Absolutely peak PB question...
One day on the Somme, one day at Waterloo, or one day at Agincourt?
The Somme... probably. Over a fifth of the British forces ended up killed or missing, but it was fought over nearly five months, so unless your dice rolled really badly, you'd have a very good chance of surviving unscathed. The first day of the Somme, though, accounted for over half of those casualties
c.10% fatalities at Agincourt, for the English, and c.10% "killed and missing" at Waterloo - so a damn close-run thing between those two options.
10% at Agincourt is not my recollection - where is that from?
Total casualties were 25% in Wellington’s army.
Not a criticism of you but I always find the use of “casualties” to be really frustrating as it lumps together dead and injured.
I know you are a historian but do you also not find it a bit of a misleading grouping?
The figure of dead is v important as they can never fight again, then there will be those badly injured who can never fight again but might be able to contribute again to the military or society (the old invalid regiments who manned a lot of British fortifications for example) and those injured who could eventually return to the front line.
Should we not distinguish between dead and injured rather than lump them together?
We rarely have detailed information. But, it’s a fair rule of thumb that about 50% of the wounded would succumb to sepsis, prior to antibiotics.
War (for obvious reasons) tends to be analysed from a distance, as regards both time and location. I often wonder how it would be if it were covered in real time technicolour detail, with no censorship, no allowance for viewer squeamishness, no detachment, no euphemisms, no geopolitical sheen, just presented as it is in all of its horror. Would there be less of it? I reckon there probably would.
I think we’d get used to it, the same way the Mongols got used to killing vast numbers of people in person, rather than at a distance.
It's worse. We'd like it.
I am shocked at how people get off at extremely hardcore violence, sadism, depravity and abuse, but they do.
Some stuff, personally, I just don't watch to watch. And wish I hadn't.
I have a memory of my parents shipping me off to my Aunt's for an end of the Sixties Party on New year's Eve. I would have been three and a month. The same thing happened when our kid was born. Three and a half.
But what's your first memory of a non-personal event? Something in the news? Or something that happened in your town, but not personally witnessed? Perhaps discussed in front of you
For me, as I say, it is Apollo 11. Age 6
My dad always claimed he could remember his Dad and a friend discussing Peace in Our Time, and Munich, when he was 4
It's a good question and difficult to disentangle. I do remember the World Cup Final of 1970 being discussed. But only cos it was my brother's Christening the same day. 3 and a half. I definitely remember decimal currency coming in when I was four, but again that was cos of my Mam's excitement at the change she got from the shop.
That's valid and impressive! Remembering a non-personal event aged 3 and a half
The winner so far
I have a weird fugitive memory of my falling out of a cot aged 2 and something. Incredibly dim and smoky memory
And I've been told I did fall out of a cot at that time, dramatically, but it is quite possible I invented the memory to fit the story, when told later
The earliest precise memories - and they are precise, i recall other kids, and being told to sleep at weird times - are from my first days at nursery school, just turned 4
Yes, there's a very big difference between first memories, and memories of "events". I have a short but distinct memory of the hospital food, and the post op discomfort, when I went in for an eye operation at somewhere between 2 and 3 years old.
Nursery school first day, quite distinctly. And the fact that they handed out jelly babies on the children's birthdays.
Yep. Nursery school. That's still there. Specifically being put to bed in the afternoon and my blanket being blue with a little red airplane stitched on.
All together now ... Awwww
I have a clear memory of throwing things at my younger brother whilst he was still trapped in his cot but crawling up and down and making a lot of noise. He was only 18 months younger than me so I must have been under 4. You lot are (a) far too nice (b) selective in your memories or (c) not entirely candid.
I have a memory of my parents shipping me off to my Aunt's for an end of the Sixties Party on New year's Eve. I would have been three and a month. The same thing happened when our kid was born. Three and a half.
But what's your first memory of a non-personal event? Something in the news? Or something that happened in your town, but not personally witnessed? Perhaps discussed in front of you
For me, as I say, it is Apollo 11. Age 6
My dad always claimed he could remember his Dad and a friend discussing Peace in Our Time, and Munich, when he was 4
It's a good question and difficult to disentangle. I do remember the World Cup Final of 1970 being discussed. But only cos it was my brother's Christening the same day. 3 and a half. I definitely remember decimal currency coming in when I was four, but again that was cos of my Mam's excitement at the change she got from the shop.
That's valid and impressive! Remembering a non-personal event aged 3 and a half
The winner so far
I have a weird fugitive memory of my falling out of a cot aged 2 and something. Incredibly dim and smoky memory
And I've been told I did fall out of a cot at that time, dramatically, but it is quite possible I invented the memory to fit the story, when told later
The earliest precise memories - and they are precise, i recall other kids, and being told to sleep at weird times - are from my first days at nursery school, just turned 4
Yes, there's a very big difference between first memories, and memories of "events". I have a short but distinct memory of the hospital food, and the post op discomfort, when I went in for an eye operation at somewhere between 2 and 3 years old.
Nursery school first day, quite distinctly. And the fact that they handed out jelly babies on the children's birthdays.
Yep. Nursery school. That's still there. Specifically being put to bed in the afternoon and my blanket being blue with a little red airplane stitched on.
All together now ... Awwww
That’s exactly my memory! Being told to go to sleep in the afternoon and sort of rebelling coz it was weird
Can you picture your blanket though? I bet you can't.
No. But I did write a poem about it - When I Kiss Elizabeth - making me probably the youngest published poet in the world (age 5). The poem is discussed in detail as an example of extraordinarily precocious sexuality (and literary talent) by Peter Redgrove in “The Black Goddess and the Sixth Sense”
I have a memory of my parents shipping me off to my Aunt's for an end of the Sixties Party on New year's Eve. I would have been three and a month. The same thing happened when our kid was born. Three and a half.
But what's your first memory of a non-personal event? Something in the news? Or something that happened in your town, but not personally witnessed? Perhaps discussed in front of you
For me, as I say, it is Apollo 11. Age 6
My dad always claimed he could remember his Dad and a friend discussing Peace in Our Time, and Munich, when he was 4
It's a good question and difficult to disentangle. I do remember the World Cup Final of 1970 being discussed. But only cos it was my brother's Christening the same day. 3 and a half. I definitely remember decimal currency coming in when I was four, but again that was cos of my Mam's excitement at the change she got from the shop.
That's valid and impressive! Remembering a non-personal event aged 3 and a half
The winner so far
I have a weird fugitive memory of my falling out of a cot aged 2 and something. Incredibly dim and smoky memory
And I've been told I did fall out of a cot at that time, dramatically, but it is quite possible I invented the memory to fit the story, when told later
The earliest precise memories - and they are precise, i recall other kids, and being told to sleep at weird times - are from my first days at nursery school, just turned 4
Yes, there's a very big difference between first memories, and memories of "events". I have a short but distinct memory of the hospital food, and the post op discomfort, when I went in for an eye operation at somewhere between 2 and 3 years old.
Nursery school first day, quite distinctly. And the fact that they handed out jelly babies on the children's birthdays.
Yep. Nursery school. That's still there. Specifically being put to bed in the afternoon and my blanket being blue with a little red airplane stitched on.
All together now ... Awwww
That’s exactly my memory! Being told to go to sleep in the afternoon and sort of rebelling coz it was weird
Can you picture your blanket though? I bet you can't.
I have a memory of my parents shipping me off to my Aunt's for an end of the Sixties Party on New year's Eve. I would have been three and a month. The same thing happened when our kid was born. Three and a half.
But what's your first memory of a non-personal event? Something in the news? Or something that happened in your town, but not personally witnessed? Perhaps discussed in front of you
For me, as I say, it is Apollo 11. Age 6
My dad always claimed he could remember his Dad and a friend discussing Peace in Our Time, and Munich, when he was 4
Yes, that too. I was thinking of overtly political events, so had excluded that.
I had an Airfix kit of the Lunar module. I think my older brother got the Saturn V...
I was born in 1975. I certainly had no memory of male Prime Ministers before Major and remember thinking the concept an musing oddity when it was pointed out to me aged about 6 that such things were possible. I think I remember the party on the playing field at the back of the estate for the silver jubilee when I had just turned two, though I am probably conflating it with the same thing for the ChazzleDizzle in 1981, which I definitely remember. I certainly remember the Falklands War. My first political memory is off Michael Foot's wife being knocked over by a low-hanging branch in an open-topped bus. My first sporting memory is of the foul by Harald Schumacher on Patrick Battison in the 1982 Football World Cup. Even then, I remember thinking it a fundamentally stupid sport. My first cultural memory is of my parents listening to Abba in the car, though my first I would claim of my own is my fondness for the Vapor's 'Turning Japanese'. I can't imagine how I accessed this. Not necessarily a massively appropriate song for a five year old. I have numerous snippets of memories from 2, 3, 4 years old - but they are like tiny context-free vignettes, viewed through a keyhole: seeing a thunderstorm, sitting in the paddling pool on a hot day (probably in the summer of 77), arguing over the lyrics to 'all things bright and beautiful' (I was right, btw), children's television, playgroups. Toys. Trains (and suddenly, unbidden, the smell of trains in the 70s...)
If, as a writer or moviemaker, one could capture that weird "keyhole" effect of super-early childhood memories, it would be a powerful thing
We are actually getting something close to that with this scattergun of very small children's views of life in the 60s, 70s and 80s right now. I am enjoying it.
I find most of them profoundly moving
Eg “walking to school in the snow and putting my feet in my father’s snowy footprints”
These memories are intrinsically poetic. Focused on tiny but poignant and immortal details. Perhaps we are all born poets but then lose the knack over time…
Always moving when we remember our childhood. Even gnarled and ruined wretches like me long to glimpse back through the mists to when Dad was as big as the fiercest of bears and Mum could perform miracles before breakfast. It was safe and warm because they made it safe and warm. I guess when we have the chance to remember that we are lucky, we had the ones to protect us who made it worth looking back longingly. Its funny, whenever I look back and remember Mum I can hear her telling me I need to go forward, and somewhere there I'll see her again. Now I'm all wistful
I have a memory of my parents shipping me off to my Aunt's for an end of the Sixties Party on New year's Eve. I would have been three and a month. The same thing happened when our kid was born. Three and a half.
But what's your first memory of a non-personal event? Something in the news? Or something that happened in your town, but not personally witnessed? Perhaps discussed in front of you
For me, as I say, it is Apollo 11. Age 6
My dad always claimed he could remember his Dad and a friend discussing Peace in Our Time, and Munich, when he was 4
It's a good question and difficult to disentangle. I do remember the World Cup Final of 1970 being discussed. But only cos it was my brother's Christening the same day. 3 and a half. I definitely remember decimal currency coming in when I was four, but again that was cos of my Mam's excitement at the change she got from the shop.
That's valid and impressive! Remembering a non-personal event aged 3 and a half
The winner so far
I have a weird fugitive memory of my falling out of a cot aged 2 and something. Incredibly dim and smoky memory
And I've been told I did fall out of a cot at that time, dramatically, but it is quite possible I invented the memory to fit the story, when told later
The earliest precise memories - and they are precise, i recall other kids, and being told to sleep at weird times - are from my first days at nursery school, just turned 4
Yes, there's a very big difference between first memories, and memories of "events". I have a short but distinct memory of the hospital food, and the post op discomfort, when I went in for an eye operation at somewhere between 2 and 3 years old.
Nursery school first day, quite distinctly. And the fact that they handed out jelly babies on the children's birthdays.
Yep. Nursery school. That's still there. Specifically being put to bed in the afternoon and my blanket being blue with a little red airplane stitched on.
All together now ... Awwww
That’s exactly my memory! Being told to go to sleep in the afternoon and sort of rebelling coz it was weird
Can you picture your blanket though? I bet you can't.
Yeah.
It had a giant EU flag on it.
Yours? Even then the metropolitan international liberal elite were trying to make you conform.
FWIW, I had one as a kid that was a giant Pride flag. Or maybe just a rainbow...
I have a memory of my parents shipping me off to my Aunt's for an end of the Sixties Party on New year's Eve. I would have been three and a month. The same thing happened when our kid was born. Three and a half.
But what's your first memory of a non-personal event? Something in the news? Or something that happened in your town, but not personally witnessed? Perhaps discussed in front of you
For me, as I say, it is Apollo 11. Age 6
My dad always claimed he could remember his Dad and a friend discussing Peace in Our Time, and Munich, when he was 4
It's a good question and difficult to disentangle. I do remember the World Cup Final of 1970 being discussed. But only cos it was my brother's Christening the same day. 3 and a half. I definitely remember decimal currency coming in when I was four, but again that was cos of my Mam's excitement at the change she got from the shop.
That's valid and impressive! Remembering a non-personal event aged 3 and a half
The winner so far
I have a weird fugitive memory of my falling out of a cot aged 2 and something. Incredibly dim and smoky memory
And I've been told I did fall out of a cot at that time, dramatically, but it is quite possible I invented the memory to fit the story, when told later
The earliest precise memories - and they are precise, i recall other kids, and being told to sleep at weird times - are from my first days at nursery school, just turned 4
Yes, there's a very big difference between first memories, and memories of "events". I have a short but distinct memory of the hospital food, and the post op discomfort, when I went in for an eye operation at somewhere between 2 and 3 years old.
Nursery school first day, quite distinctly. And the fact that they handed out jelly babies on the children's birthdays.
Yep. Nursery school. That's still there. Specifically being put to bed in the afternoon and my blanket being blue with a little red airplane stitched on.
All together now ... Awwww
I have a clear memory of throwing things at my younger brother whilst he was still trapped in his cot but crawling up and down and making a lot of noise. He was only 18 months younger than me so I must have been under 4. You lot are (a) far too nice (b) selective in your memories or (c) not entirely candid.
So your career as a judge was determined from the start ?
Gritters sent out in Bedfordshire to protect melting road surfaces in heatwave
I ran a late afternoon leg of the Cotswold Relay a few years ago. Vivid memory of stepping out of the car barefoot and the foot sinking into the melty tarmac. A very hot day.
I have a memory of my parents shipping me off to my Aunt's for an end of the Sixties Party on New year's Eve. I would have been three and a month. The same thing happened when our kid was born. Three and a half.
But what's your first memory of a non-personal event? Something in the news? Or something that happened in your town, but not personally witnessed? Perhaps discussed in front of you
For me, as I say, it is Apollo 11. Age 6
My dad always claimed he could remember his Dad and a friend discussing Peace in Our Time, and Munich, when he was 4
Yes, that too. I was thinking of overtly political events, so had excluded that.
I had an Airfix kit of the Lunar module. I think my older brother got the Saturn V...
I was born in 1975. I certainly had no memory of male Prime Ministers before Major and remember thinking the concept an musing oddity when it was pointed out to me aged about 6 that such things were possible. I think I remember the party on the playing field at the back of the estate for the silver jubilee when I had just turned two, though I am probably conflating it with the same thing for the ChazzleDizzle in 1981, which I definitely remember. I certainly remember the Falklands War. My first political memory is off Michael Foot's wife being knocked over by a low-hanging branch in an open-topped bus. My first sporting memory is of the foul by Harald Schumacher on Patrick Battison in the 1982 Football World Cup. Even then, I remember thinking it a fundamentally stupid sport. My first cultural memory is of my parents listening to Abba in the car, though my first I would claim of my own is my fondness for the Vapor's 'Turning Japanese'. I can't imagine how I accessed this. Not necessarily a massively appropriate song for a five year old. I have numerous snippets of memories from 2, 3, 4 years old - but they are like tiny context-free vignettes, viewed through a keyhole: seeing a thunderstorm, sitting in the paddling pool on a hot day (probably in the summer of 77), arguing over the lyrics to 'all things bright and beautiful' (I was right, btw), children's television, playgroups. Toys. Trains (and suddenly, unbidden, the smell of trains in the 70s...)
If, as a writer or moviemaker, one could capture that weird "keyhole" effect of super-early childhood memories, it would be a powerful thing
We are actually getting something close to that with this scattergun of very small children's views of life in the 60s, 70s and 80s right now. I am enjoying it.
I find most of them profoundly moving
Eg “walking to school in the snow and putting my feet in my father’s snowy footprints”
These memories are intrinsically poetic. Focused on tiny but poignant and immortal details. Perhaps we are all born poets but then lose the knack over time…
We are. If you try and write poetry you can't unless you let everything you've constructed as an adult in order to 'get by' fall away. This is why so few can do it and why the experience of reading it can be strangely unsettling.
My older daughter, 19, has expressed an interest in a road trip with her geriatric old dad, this summer. Last year we did south/central France and it was brilliant
But where now? We’ve done France (and Italy before it) and anywhere south seems absurdly hot
I want somewhere quirky but full of interest and ideally somewhere I’ve not been as well. I’m thinking Scandinavia or Eastern Europe….
You know, I almost feel sorry for Elon Musk. Because in the area where he's fighting the Trump administration, he is certainly in the right.
The Big Beautiful Bill is monumentally stupid, adding to US deficits now, and worsening the US's competitiveness.
But what did Musk expect? Trump has never shown the slightest evidence that he's cared about the deficit. He liked DOGE because he liked the idea of getting rid of people from the US public workforce who disagreed with him.
I have a memory of my parents shipping me off to my Aunt's for an end of the Sixties Party on New year's Eve. I would have been three and a month. The same thing happened when our kid was born. Three and a half.
But what's your first memory of a non-personal event? Something in the news? Or something that happened in your town, but not personally witnessed? Perhaps discussed in front of you
For me, as I say, it is Apollo 11. Age 6
My dad always claimed he could remember his Dad and a friend discussing Peace in Our Time, and Munich, when he was 4
Yes, that too. I was thinking of overtly political events, so had excluded that.
I had an Airfix kit of the Lunar module. I think my older brother got the Saturn V...
I was born in 1975. I certainly had no memory of male Prime Ministers before Major and remember thinking the concept an musing oddity when it was pointed out to me aged about 6 that such things were possible. I think I remember the party on the playing field at the back of the estate for the silver jubilee when I had just turned two, though I am probably conflating it with the same thing for the ChazzleDizzle in 1981, which I definitely remember. I certainly remember the Falklands War. My first political memory is off Michael Foot's wife being knocked over by a low-hanging branch in an open-topped bus. My first sporting memory is of the foul by Harald Schumacher on Patrick Battison in the 1982 Football World Cup. Even then, I remember thinking it a fundamentally stupid sport. My first cultural memory is of my parents listening to Abba in the car, though my first I would claim of my own is my fondness for the Vapor's 'Turning Japanese'. I can't imagine how I accessed this. Not necessarily a massively appropriate song for a five year old. I have numerous snippets of memories from 2, 3, 4 years old - but they are like tiny context-free vignettes, viewed through a keyhole: seeing a thunderstorm, sitting in the paddling pool on a hot day (probably in the summer of 77), arguing over the lyrics to 'all things bright and beautiful' (I was right, btw), children's television, playgroups. Toys. Trains (and suddenly, unbidden, the smell of trains in the 70s...)
If, as a writer or moviemaker, one could capture that weird "keyhole" effect of super-early childhood memories, it would be a powerful thing
We are actually getting something close to that with this scattergun of very small children's views of life in the 60s, 70s and 80s right now. I am enjoying it.
I find most of them profoundly moving
Eg “walking to school in the snow and putting my feet in my father’s snowy footprints”
These memories are intrinsically poetic. Focused on tiny but poignant and immortal details. Perhaps we are all born poets but then lose the knack over time…
Always moving when we remember our childhood. Even gnarled and ruined wretches like me long to glimpse back through the mists to when Dad was as big as the fiercest of bears and Mum could perform miracles before breakfast. It was safe and warm because they made it safe and warm. I guess when we have the chance to remember that we are lucky, we had the ones to protect us who made it worth looking back longingly. Its funny, whenever I look back and remember Mum I can hear her telling me I need to go forward, and somewhere there I'll see her again. Now I'm all wistful
Beautifully put. I've another seam: childhood holidays, which up to the age of 5 were all on the Isle of Arran. Walking up to the hill after tea to put a stone on the cairn with my Dad, in matching blue woolly jumpers, the sun setting on the Firth of Clyde behind us. He seemed so impossibly old and wise then, but can't have been more than 30. He never gave the impression of doubt. I wonder if he felt it.
My older daughter, 19, has expressed an interest in a road trip with her geriatric old dad, this summer. Last year we did south/central France and it was brilliant
But where now? We’ve done France (and Italy before it) and anywhere south seems absurdly hot
I want somewhere quirky but full of interest and ideally somewhere I’ve not been as well. I’m thinking Scandinavia or Eastern Europe….
It may be much too easy, but how about the west of Ireland?
Gritters sent out in Bedfordshire to protect melting road surfaces in heatwave
I ran a late afternoon leg of the Cotswold Relay a few years ago. Vivid memory of stepping out of the car barefoot and the foot sinking into the melty tarmac. A very hot day.
I may be wrong, but it doesn't strike me as obvious that gritters would help in this situation.
A podcast from the Telegraph Battle Lines feed, which starts with an item about the IDF being ordered to shoot with live ammunition at civilians coming to the food distribution points.
My older daughter, 19, has expressed an interest in a road trip with her geriatric old dad, this summer. Last year we did south/central France and it was brilliant
But where now? We’ve done France (and Italy before it) and anywhere south seems absurdly hot
I want somewhere quirky but full of interest and ideally somewhere I’ve not been as well. I’m thinking Scandinavia or Eastern Europe….
How about a Baltic States road trip? You could go from Vilnius to the coast at Klaipeda and follow it round to Riga and maybe go up into Estonia.
Now: some banks might have $60m of customer deposits, and another $30m of Certificates of Deposits or something else. But it simply not the case they lend out a multiple of their deposits.
The issue with fractional reserve banking - and the reason that people get confused - is that when a bank lends money to someone, then it creates a deposit somewhere else in the banking system."
Yep I know that @rcs1000, but I wasn't going into that detail in replying to @hyufd. The key point being that depending upon the ratio of a bank's lending to its deposit determines the new money created in the economy. I deposit a £1 in the bank, the bank lends it to someone who deposits it and there is now £2 sitting on deposit. If everyone wants to withdraw their money there would be a run on the bank.
Indeed as a result of the fact that the same pound can be listed as a deposit and a loan repeatedly at the same bank.
I deposit £10 at Barclays, which loans it to Archie.
Archie deposits the £10 at Lloyds, which loans it to Bob.
Bob deposits the £10 at Barclays, which loans it to Craig who deposits it at Halifax.
Of the original £10, it is now at Halifax. Barclays is neutral, owing Bob and I £20 in total, and being owed £20 by Archie and Craig.
Scale this up repeatedly, then if Bob and I and everyone else who deposited our money at Barclays want it back simultaneously, Barclays won't have that much money available.
Comments
I know you are a historian but do you also not find it a bit of a misleading grouping?
The figure of dead is v important as they can never fight again, then there will be those badly injured who can never fight again but might be able to contribute again to the military or society (the old invalid regiments who manned a lot of British fortifications for example) and those injured who could eventually return to the front line.
Should we not distinguish between dead and injured rather than lump them together?
REPORTER: What happened to Elon Musk?
TRUMP: Who?
R: What happened to Elon Musk?
TRUMP: Nothing. He's upset he's losing his EV mandate. But he could lose a lot more than that, I can tell you right now. Elon can lose a lot more than that.
https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lsvqhmk33i2t
I distinctly remember riding on the last ever trolly bus journey in Huddersfield.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybuses_in_Huddersfield
It was en evening trip, and the bus was decked out with strings of lightbulbs to mark the occasion.
You could have a man, who survives the battle, and just takes a minor graze at the end, dying of infection.
"That's not how fractional reserve banking works.
If you look at the balance sheet of pretty much any bank it will look something like this:
Assets:
Loans - $80m
Goverment Bonds - $20m
Liabilities:
Customer Deposits - $90m
Shareholders Equity - $10m
Now: some banks might have $60m of customer deposits, and another $30m of Certificates of Deposits or something else. But it simply not the case they lend out a multiple of their deposits.
The issue with fractional reserve banking - and the reason that people get confused - is that when a bank lends money to someone, then it creates a deposit somewhere else in the banking system."
Yep I know that @rcs1000, but I wasn't going into that detail in replying to @hyufd. The key point being that depending upon the ratio of a bank's lending to its deposit determines the new money created in the economy. I deposit a £1 in the bank, the bank lends it to someone who deposits it and there is now £2 sitting on deposit. If everyone wants to withdraw their money there would be a run on the bank.
I definitely remember decimal currency coming in when I was four, but again that was cos of my Mam's excitement at the change she got from the shop.
SNP: 26%
Labour: 22%
Reform UK: 16%
Scottish Green Party: 15%
Conservatives: 10%
Liberal Democrats: 8%
Alba Party: 2%
Other: 1%
https://bsky.app/profile/timbale.bsky.social/post/3lsvqsrlqes2s
I certainly had no memory of male Prime Ministers before Major and remember thinking the concept an musing oddity when it was pointed out to me aged about 7 that such things were possible - so that would be in relation to the 1983 election.
My first political memory is off Michael Foot's wife being knocked over by a low-hanging branch in an open-topped bus.
I think I remember the party on the playing field at the back of the estate for the silver jubilee when I had just turned two, though I am probably conflating it with the same thing for the ChazzleDizzle in 1981, which I definitely remember, when I was 6. Actually, I have quite a lot of memories of the ChazzleDizzle - not necessarily the thing itself but the thing being current. I remember they drive through our suburb (this may be a couple of years later - I think I was in junior school by then) and the class dividing on whether we were on Charles's side or Diana's - it probably essentially split along gender lines.
I certainly remember the Falklands War, when I was 7.
My first sporting memory is of the foul by Harald Schumacher on Patrick Battison in the 1982 Football World Cup. Even then, I remember thinking it a fundamentally stupid sport.
My first cultural memory is of my parents listening to Abba in the car, though my first I would claim of my own is my fondness for the Vapor's 'Turning Japanese'. I can't imagine how I accessed this. Not necessarily a massively appropriate song for a five year old.
I have numerous snippets of memories from 2, 3, 4 years old - but they are like tiny context-free vignettes, viewed through a keyhole: seeing a thunderstorm, sitting in the paddling pool on a hot day (probably in the summer of 77), arguing over the lyrics to 'all things bright and beautiful' (I was right, btw), children's television, playgroups. Toys. Trains (and suddenly, unbidden, the smell of trains in the 70s...)
The winner so far
I have a weird fugitive memory of my falling out of a cot aged 2 and something. Incredibly dim and smoky memory
And I've been told I did fall out of a cot at that time, dramatically, but it is quite possible I invented the memory to fit the story, when told later
The earliest precise memories - and they are precise, i recall other kids, and being told to sleep at weird times - are from my first days at nursery school, just turned 4
Decimalisation: definitely no specific memory.
Men's 400m Final at the Munich Olympics: definite memory of the final bend.
Title Sequence of Mary, Mungo and Midge: definite memory. But that could have been any time 1969-1974.
In terms of world events, I'm sure I knew of the Winter of Discontent, but no TV image comes to mind from primary memory, and Thatcher's becoming PM I think I recall from images since. The definitive one I absolutely know I saw at the time was the Iranian Embassy Siege, and I was nearly 10. I also recall the ITN job losses ticker from quite early on.
I wonder if the family kept away from the news at the time, the Woolworth's fire was in that time window and Dad had been treated at the scene and I knew he'd been involved in something, but I didn't know directly of that as a news event.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yl6GK42UpCM
I have no memory of walking with Mam and Dad to see the Grateful Dead on the Sunday. (It was only across a couple of fields). Apparently they played for five hours.
Gritters sent out in Bedfordshire to protect melting road surfaces in heatwave
I have a short but distinct memory of the hospital food, and the post op discomfort, when I went in for an eye operation at somewhere between 2 and 3 years old.
Nursery school first day, quite distinctly.
And the fact that they handed out jelly babies on the children's birthdays.
Indeed it's likely Jerry Garcia himself could not recall any of his own gigs in his later years
So I think that's kinda the point, and you're in excellent company
She would have been 25. Utter astonishment when told years later.
But that was for completely different reasons.
Office for Budget irresponsibility
There's a quote by somebody that goes something like "if people really knew what war is like there'd never be another one."
Wishful exaggeration, obviously, but I think the point it makes is a good one.
probably 4, and vague recollections of Upminster duckpond when I’d have been about 2 or 3
I think she winked and did the 'call me' thing with her hand
All together now ... Awwww
Stop being mean to Morgan.
***LegendaryModestyKlaxon***
When she got drunk, she got *epically* drunk...
He’s probably entitled via his English ancestry
Reporter: Are you going to deport Elon Musk?
Trump: We'll have to take a look. We might have to put DOGE on Elon. You know what DOGE is? The monster that might have to go back and eat Elon. Wouldn’t that be terrible? He gets a lot of subsidies.
I have a memory from infant school days of a late score announced between Manchester United and Manchester City, and for some time afterwards thinking they were the only two football clubs (plausible since I knew noone who supported anyone else).
But I never remember a Saturday when Grandstand was not on, in my own house or anyone else's, no matter how inconsequential the eventbeing televised. I wasn't the highlight of the day, but it was a solid five hours of good telly. I miss it often and surprisingly strongly. There is no five hour period of terrestrial telly currently as good or as unirritating.
Reform-bashers often characterise its voters as wanting to turn the clock back to the 1950s. (Often 1955, specifically, oddly.) I'm sure they don't, really. But the nostalgic, powerful yearning I have for Grandstand in the 1980s makes me empathise. For five hours, absolutely everything was right with the world. I had played rugby in the morning and my dad had played golf. Lunch would be burgers, or perhaps bacon sandwiches, or pasties, and a glass of milk. And we would sit companionably and disinterestedly - me, dad, mum and the cat - in front of a rugby league match, with sporadic interruptions telling us the scores of football matches we didn't care about. Some light dozing might take place. And then the vidiprinter, and the almost religious intonation of the classifieds. And shortly it would be time for tea. It was brilliant.
Gone, all gone.
(The rest of it is OK too)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dmf6aEx09Oo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1J8Gpx-r0Y&list=RDC1J8Gpx-r0Y&start_radio=1
"What time is it, Mr Wolf ?" *
(*Squid Game cutting room floor.)
Personal things, it's the car breaking down on the Isle of Wight and us having to get a bus to the beach instead, when I was about 3. And also my grandma eating weird stick things for breakfast on the same holiday (All Bran).
Its extremely perilous
1) it falls and they pay the chaos, failure and division premium or
2) it passes. But its 'not a Labour thing to do' - its damaging because its like Farage taking us back into the EU or the SNP voting to affirm the Union for the next 50 years. Its not what anyone supporting them expects or really wants
Can’t see how it ends well for the current Labour headship. They could manage “no more damage” - but I doubt it.
An appearance on This Morning might be a suitable platform for this.
I am shocked at how people get off at extremely hardcore violence, sadism, depravity and abuse, but they do.
Some stuff, personally, I just don't watch to watch. And wish I hadn't.
https://a.co/d/1WsvYjk
It had a giant EU flag on it.
Eg “walking to school in the snow and putting my feet in my father’s snowy footprints”
These memories are intrinsically poetic. Focused on tiny but poignant and immortal details. Perhaps we are all born poets but then lose the knack over time…
Yes 52% No 48%
The U.S. Department of Justice has begun to prioritize stripping naturalized Americans of their citizenship when charged with crimes, according to a recent memo.
I sincerely and genuinely hope they both have diarrhoea every day for the rest of their lives. No more solid shits just straight fucking magma.
https://x.com/JStein_WaPo/status/1940017367309816274
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58FcNpsROEU&t=1360s
I guess when we have the chance to remember that we are lucky, we had the ones to protect us who made it worth looking back longingly.
Its funny, whenever I look back and remember Mum I can hear her telling me I need to go forward, and somewhere there I'll see her again.
Now I'm all wistful
FWIW, I had one as a kid that was a giant Pride flag. Or maybe just a rainbow...
Can I have ideas please?
My older daughter, 19, has expressed an interest in a road trip with her geriatric old dad, this summer. Last year we did south/central France and it was brilliant
But where now? We’ve done France (and Italy before it) and anywhere south seems absurdly hot
I want somewhere quirky but full of interest and ideally somewhere I’ve not been as well. I’m thinking Scandinavia or Eastern Europe….
The Big Beautiful Bill is monumentally stupid, adding to US deficits now, and worsening the US's competitiveness.
But what did Musk expect? Trump has never shown the slightest evidence that he's cared about the deficit. He liked DOGE because he liked the idea of getting rid of people from the US public workforce who disagreed with him.
I've another seam: childhood holidays, which up to the age of 5 were all on the Isle of Arran. Walking up to the hill after tea to put a stone on the cairn with my Dad, in matching blue woolly jumpers, the sun setting on the Firth of Clyde behind us. He seemed so impossibly old and wise then, but can't have been more than 30. He never gave the impression of doubt. I wonder if he felt it.
https://x.com/RestoreBritain_/status/1940048055962939864
We are delighted to welcome Susan Hall AM (@Councillorsuzie), Leader of the Conservative Group on the London Assembly, to our Advisory Board.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/battle-lines/
Husk off: to my eye, this by Netanyahu is on a similar level to Russian forces in occupied Ukraine; a policy of random, deliberate massacre.
I deposit £10 at Barclays, which loans it to Archie.
Archie deposits the £10 at Lloyds, which loans it to Bob.
Bob deposits the £10 at Barclays, which loans it to Craig who deposits it at Halifax.
Of the original £10, it is now at Halifax. Barclays is neutral, owing Bob and I £20 in total, and being owed £20 by Archie and Craig.
Scale this up repeatedly, then if Bob and I and everyone else who deposited our money at Barclays want it back simultaneously, Barclays won't have that much money available.