A two minutes silence

 

Subject: A two minutes silence

11 am on the day we remember the dead of two world wars brought a moment of silence when the nation acknowledges the debt of gratitude we owe the fallen.
We are largely a stoic lot not known for showing our feelings or emotions and yet I was moved as the cameras panned down on small clusters of people standing still as a salute to the fallen. Groups on a bridge, groups walking the sands, in shopping centres  or singly laying aside what they were doing in a symbolic action of remembrance.
I remember in years gone by pulling over my car to stop at the road side, sadly these days I’m more likely indoors than out so it’s more of a passive show these days but I am reminded and reflect how a nation is of one mind on occasions like this.
Sadly not a mile away from the Whitehall cenotaph people are gathering to show their disgust that the world is standing inert whilst another conflict is underway, a conflict which highlights the abysmal intolerance of nations towards each other such as in Gaza an intolerance which boarders on the insane as each side declares that the other should not exist.
It’s a modern phenomenon but applause breaks out as the bugler signals the end of the commemorative silence, applause which breaks into the somber silence like a knife though butter signalling that life carries on regardless and dispenses with the awkwardness of that fact. The living go about their business whist the corpse of the Tommy caught in the no man’s land of the Somme is part of that other business which from time to time we commit our self.