Letter of the Day (returns!)

See below my letter of the day from the Irish Times.

There has been an ongoing debate on the letters page about the issue of poppy wearing or the lack thereof, which I couldn’t help but notice given that one of the contributors was someone who once offended me greatly about the same issue.

When I was in my final year of college, I had a lecturer teaching Irish history who, let us be polite about it, wasn’t very interested in the Irish perspective on said history. Around this time of year, he arrived in for our class sporting a poppy (or possibly three, he would happily have covered himself in them), which is marginally noticeable in this country but not much besides. But then he sat down and spent the first 25 minutes of his class moaning about how a few people had given him a dirty look for daring to wear something so honorable.

After months of this kind of attitude I finally snapped that day and am yet to regret for a moment having done so.

I think it happened mainly because I had finally lost all respect for him as a historian and/or professor. The whole point of studying history is to gain perspective, to appreciate the need for it, so see that there are always multiple perspectives etc. And yet this ignoramous was forcing a poppy down our proverbial (or not so?) throats just because it was what he believed in a purely personal capacity.

Anyway. The letter below covers what should be said in response to such ignorance.

WEARING THE POPPY

Madam, -

My late father served in the British army in the second World War. He never wore a poppy and anyone I knew who served with him never wore a poppy.

They regarded it, and the British Legion, as symbolising all that was worst, most jingoistic and reactionary in the British establishment.

I suspect that this was the attitude of most second World War veterans, because it was the votes of three million servicemen that put Churchill out of office in 1945 and Clement Attlee’s Labour government in.

I appreciate that times change and the poppy means different things to different people.

But I think it is important not to impose contemporary views of the significance of wearing, or not wearing a poppy, on past generations.

It would certainly be wrong to assume the poppy had, or has, the same significance for all British veterans and their families. - Yours, etc,

PÁDRAIG YEATES, Howth.

Day 5: I’ve gone insane

But I do have a saviour.

The magic and majesty of StumbleUpon has brought me to an online comic strip which may just save my mind as well as my soul - Will Write For Chocolate - pretty much says it all in the title doesn’t it?

So yes. I’ve gone insane. And I’m blaming the anaesthetist. Why on god’s earth did he have to beat the s**t out of my hand?! At least I was expecting this nonsense with my leg. And my brain being dysfunctional. And maybe the boredom. But the hand?!!

Just watched Wimbledon, ‘the movie’ - better than I thought it would be probably, but then I was just blinded by all the grass court tennis.

Brain. Sapped. Of. All. Meaning.

The new James Bond movie is out tomorrow - Casino Royale, strike 2! I’m not convinced, at all, but we’ll see. Also the whole can’t-move-my-leg thing is ruining my ability to see it on the night it opens which is annoying beyond words, but I suppose bigger fish must be fried.

Amazing how easy it is to lose all sense of perspective.

No More Singles!!

God it’s so fricking boring being stuck on the couch. I have no idea how people deliberately choose to do this on a day-to-day basis. Who would choose such mind-numbing nonsensical tedium?

So, surgery was had - leg in ribbons, and bandages, head still woozy from anaesthetic, and all this compounded by random barely-explicable injury to my left hand. Got home on Saturday. Have been basically stationary ever since. And not in a fun, restful kinda way.

So far I’m on day four of my couch-bound-week. Days pass into night and I barely notice. I can’t do any exercise for a month and no doubt the ’snacks’ I’m all but living off will begin to show in the absence of an ability to burn the calories they contain. But that’s all fairly irrelevant in the context of the neverending and frankly frustrating-as-hell issue with my leg.

One thing I have noticed from my many, many hours with only a television to amuse me (again, I’m sure there are plenty who would love the idea but it really isn’t doing it for me), is that every second band on the planet seems to be releasing a singles collection this christmas. Whatever about Depeche Mode, Oasis and Feeder - when the likes of the Sugababes are doing it (amusingly with cover art featuring their 3rd replacement singer in as many years!) you know you have a problem.

The biggest annoyance caused by my post-operative state is my inability to do anything. I don’t just mean move. I had plans made to catch up on reading, to design a few websites, etc., etc. - and THEN I got home from hospital and realised the anaesthetic still floating somewhere in my brain is utterly preventing me from doing any of these things. I can’t think. Or concentrate. And this post is the most I’ve been able to read for days.

I don’t do boredom well.

Old habits and new dogs

No matter how often I attempt a regular update of this site I keep stopping. Every now and then I seem to get into a habit and then something stops it. Until something ridiculous happens or something pathetic or something awful.

I’m not sure which of the three is going on at the moment.

I’m going into hospital tomorrow but that’s not really the issue, or anything. It’s bullshit to be honest. It’s just taking the soul out of my week I suppose.

America continues to amuse me, both in the broader general sense and in absolute terms. I try to care more but maybe I don’t and maybe that’s the problem.

I’m still a little over-consumed with the shitness of people. People are fundamentally bad to each other. Which kinda makes you not want to get out of bed in the morning. Because the best case scenario is that they may not crap on you again for at least a few hours…

What total shite.