Two Minutes


I stood still. I was getting a casserole ready, had a chopping board full of root vegetables and the Rayburn lit ready. I was checking the clock for the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. I had the iron pot warming on the coal lit stove. The hands on the clock said it is time to be still. 

The First Two Minute Silence in London (11th November 1919) as reported in the Manchester Guardian, 12th November 1919.
'The first stroke of eleven produced a magical effect.
The tram cars glided into stillness, motors ceased to cough and fume, and stopped dead, and the mighty-limbed dray horses hunched back upon their loads and stopped also, seeming to do it of their own volition.
Someone took off his hat, and with a nervous hesitancy the rest of the men bowed their heads also. Here and there an old soldier could be detected slipping unconsciously into the posture of 'attention'. An elderly woman, not far away, wiped her eyes, and the man beside her looked white and stern. Everyone stood very still ... The hush deepened. It had spread over the whole city and become so pronounced as to impress one with a sense of audibility. It was a silence which was almost pain ... And the spirit of memory brooded over it all.'

Comments

  1. Jeremy Bates11 November 2012 at 21:02

    That must have been an awesome moment in time. I believe people had more of a spirit of cooperation back then. Today, it would be near impossible to do something like that.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Lisa Southard11 November 2012 at 21:10

    The unity of sorrow- I think it would have been a stunning experience but don't envy the raw grief. It was rather lovely to feel a bit of co-operative spirit during the London Olympics this year and no war required :-)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Suze11 November 2012 at 23:42

    What can we do to bring back that spirit of cooperation?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Botanist12 November 2012 at 00:02

    That news report captures the moment so vividly, I can picture the eerie hush of a nation remembering.

    When I moved to Canada, I was immediately impressed with how much more seriously folks take Remembrance Day over here. Something of that hush still descends on towns here, as crowds gather around cenotaphs each year to pay their respects.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Christine Rains12 November 2012 at 01:58

    A wonderfully touching post. I remember my Grandad every year on the 11th. He was a proud WWII vet.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Lisa Southard12 November 2012 at 10:14

    Suze: As far as the spirit of co-operation goes, education has got to be a key component. It is something I think about. I see a wonderful change in many of my students and it's the group ethos we've nurtured that makes it happen (in my humble opinion!)
    Mr Botanist: It's the shared experience that makes it so compelling and I hope the tradition keeps going.
    Christine: Thinking of what our grandparents survived is a strong inspiration indeed.
    Thank you all for reading and sharing :-)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thank you for reading my words- my chance to read yours here:

Popular posts from this blog

Corona Creep Up

Image
Words From The Start Of Lockdown Life Mr looks to the future, it looks like hedges. Saturday March 14th 2020 On the drive to work I got bored of changing the windscreen wiper settings, then a little off-white spider raced around on the steering wheel. I blew it onto the dashboard but it jumped back. Cheeky spider. At work we are bored of coronavirus restrictions and bored at the prospect of it continuing. We don’t know anyone who has it. Supermarket shelves are missing toilet roll, dried pasta, as previously, now also tins of beans and tomatoes. There are travel bans and cancelled events. Last night I had to teach a non contact TKD session - no pads, no sparring, no hand shaking. I began my class with ‘first of all, please don’t breathe because that’s dangerous now.’ All of us are ‘meh’ about these restrictions. We understand that infection control is serious for the immune-compromised, we adhere to protocol for that reason. But the paranoia and boredom: meh. Monday March
Read more

Fun And Thievery

Image
All day marvellous words pour through my head to describe the sounds, sights, and scents of nature. This morning a light frost was laid out for our delectation, harming no flowers, stilting no birdsong. I have energy to get gardening, to plan, to write the novel, but daily life is scarcely reported upon in spite of how it describes itself to me. We are tentatively out of lockdown, allowed to meet outside in socially distanced groups of up to 6. We are allowed to teach outdoors, numbers limited by space, keeping a 2 metre gap between students (unless they are a family bubble). At home we have the gazebo set up with a picnic bench to host outdoor socialising. Internally we are weary, we are tattered lace on spindly side tables. Every little bit of rest like this morning’s coffee in bed is held onto as though I am stockpiling loveliness in order to survive. I am writing this to help ease that mentality. I would like to adjust out of isolation, I would like to be a light frost thawing
Read more