Other Ways of Remembering, Twinning Celebrations and One Very Bonkers Reading

I tend to steer clear of events that have strong military associations. "Don't you care about the suffering and loss of life?" people ask. I do. Very much. I care enough not to support anything that promotes or glorifies war. It is not 'sweet and right' to die for your country. The truth is, it's painful and ugly and desperately lonely. It is also a terrible, terrible waste. 

I would rather we concentrated our efforts on reducing the risk of war. Our troops should be withdrawn from overseas unless they are being used to help emergency efforts following international disasters. It gave me me no joy to see a 12 year old boy lose 16 members of his family and both his arms in a bombing raid. It gave me no joy to witness the hypocrisy of the country that bombed him inviting him to receive free treatment for his extensive burns and offering him citizenship and a home, then cutting his access to care once he'd turned 18.

The recent photo of a group of young recruits with the fascist Tommy Robinson has deepened my anxiety. The military seeks to distance itself from racism and far-right groups, but I'm afraid that doesn't hold much water with me. I remember only too well what I witnessed in Northern Ireland, both when I lived there and on subsequent visits - soldiers lying on their bellies 

with loaded weapons trained on the Catholic players of a Sunday afternoon game of football, soldiers entering a bus going up the Falls Road and snapping their fingers underneath young Catholic lads' noses to try and get them to react so they could haul them off and arrest them, searchlights from military helicopters shining in through our windows all night when we were trying to sleep. Then there was the young Bay City Rollers fan who was lifted and interrogated at Castlereagh - the soldiers put a twin bar electric fire behind his legs to make him talk. Several decades on, not a lot has changed. Abu Ghraib, Basra, Helmand are names that are synonymous with torture and murder. 

We know that bullying is rife in the army. My nephew was in the US army for a while and he wrote at great length about how new recruits were broken down and then rebuilt. This is how you form an army. You dehumanise them. It is no accident that some of the people I have worked with who went on to develop huge problems with violence and substance abuse date their falling apart from their army days.  Some of the things my nephew told me were tantamount to brainwashing. 

My father fought in Vietnam and Korea. I grew up with Vietnam on my TV and in the papers every day. Many of those images still haunt me. My father was very proud to have had a man's hands chopped off. He actually boasted about that. So don't ask me why I wear the white poppy instead of the traditional red one. Don't ask me why I will not stand side by side with military personnel on Remembrance Day. I have other ways of remembering - and I insist on thinking about the future.

Also forthcoming is the celebration of Oxford's twinning with six cities - Bonn, Grenoble, Leon, Lieden, Perm and Wroclaw. 

The wonderful Arne Richards has curated and composed some excellent music for the cantata and several community choirs will be performing alongside Oxford Concert Party that evening. As for the text of the cantata, be warned - it's full of eccentric curiosities. I should know. I wrote it. Here's one of them in the picture above. 

Note, too, that I will be making a comeback from my acting career (last seen in 1987) with the inimitable Rip Bulkley of Back Room Poets. Don't miss it. This is a one-off. The date for your diaries is Thursday 22nd November and the performance will be at Oxford Town Hall. 

In the meantime, if someone can help me with my pronunciation of Wroclaw, I would be very grateful.

​I am delighted to have been placed 3rd in the To Hull and Back Short Story Competition. This is a marvellously bonkers competition and, as the writer of many bonkers' stories, it's a rare and welcome opportunity to find a wee bit of a platform.

I'll be reading in Bristol on Saturday 8th December at the Left Bank, 128 Cheltenham Rd, BS6 5RW at 6.30pm.  Do come and join us if you're in the area.

And if you're wondering about the picture above - it isn't a scene from Dr. Who, but a snapshot of the city's residents who painted themselves blue for Spencer Tunick's installation 'Sea of Hull'. There is no nakedness in my short story, however, unless you count the dead pig.