Poppies at the Tower

A few weeks ago I braved the misery of a wet London day to see the poppies at the Tower of London.  A lot has been written about this elsewhere (see here and here, for example) so I won't go into detail except to say that the installation, titled Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Blood, represents every British soldier who died in the First World War.  The ceramic poppies are still being planted, but by 11th November, there will be 888,246 of them.

Even in the gloom the poppies were stunning - perhaps all the more stunning because of the gloom.

Seeing these poppies floating in the mud and the rain in the moat was a visceral reminder of the Flanders trenches.  In a simple, true, powerful way it gave me new insights into John McCrae's poem.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,       
That mark our place; and in the sky       
The larks, still bravely singing, fly    
Scarce heard amid the guns below.        

We are the Dead. Short days ago    
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie             
In Flanders fields.        

Take up our quarrel with the foe:    
To you from failing hands we throw       
The torch; be yours to hold it high.       
If ye break faith with us who die    
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow             
In Flanders fields.

Five Years of Hints

Returning after a short hiatus (unannounced, sorry about that) to celebrate the fact that a) this blog turns FIVE today and b) I am STILL blogging five years in, though sometimes by the skin of my teeth and, it

has to be admitted - more sporadically than I would wish.

During the hiatus I did wonder, as I have done periodically, about whether now might be the time to pack HTLT in mothballs but, as I have also decided periodically, I would miss the blog too much.  So, I will keep blogging and I am resolved to do it at least twice a week (Tuesdays and Fridays), which I am announcing here because I firmly believe the best way to keep a resolution is to tell your friends and family about it and then you'll be forced to stick to it to avoid the nagging.

There may also be a few more posts about museums since, reader, I spend many of my waking moments thinking about them and occasionally those thoughts may spill over onto the pages of HTLT. But, you know, all Lady Travellers have had their pet topics: Lillias Campbell Davidson, for example, wrote an awful lot about bicycles …

But enough about future plans.  I have decided to mark the blog's five-year anniversary with a quick look through the archives and some of my favourite posts.

The very first post, and how this blog got its name
The Cape Town Mean Face
Byron's Boot, Chopin's Piano ... Mandela's Wheelbarrow
Cramaziness - Christmas in Zimbabwe
Taking my eldest Adorable Nephew to a museum for the first time (warning: pictures are almost unbearably sweet)
Roots and Shoots
Hike4Hunger (or that time I spent a week hiking through the Australian bush)
Autumn in Fitzroy
Learning to speak Australian 
One of the funniest travel books of all time
My epic trip on the Ghan
On why I commemorate ANZAC Day
Enchanted Isle
On retracing one's steps
The Sublime Porte

In honour of the occasion, there should be a hint, don't you think?  Say it with me now:
surely none is more excellent in itself and its results, than the power which has become the right of every woman who has the means to achieve it - of becoming her own unescorted and independent person, a lady traveller. 

28th June

Greek poppies

I wrote this last week but owing to a massive thunderstorm putting the internet out of action, couldn't post it.  Clearly the gods were also commemorating the date in their own way ...

*

Today is the 100^th anniversary of the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo.  It is also my birthday.  The coincidence of these two events has always made me particularly conscious of the significance of the date – never more so than this year. 

It is of course pure coincidence that I happened to be born on the anniversary of the day Gavrilo Princip shot and hit Franz Ferdinand and gave Europe the excuse it had been looking for to declare war.  But, connected by a date, the two events overlap in my mind’s eye. Franz Ferdinand so formal with his uniform, his waxed moustache and plumed helmet; his wife Sophie in white, with flowers tucked into her belt.  My mother in a stuffy, green-tinged hospital room, wearing a white nightie.  I see myself, face scrunched up, howling the way I am in my earliest photos, held at arms’ length.  I see – not the Archduke - but the man in the crowd; one of many who had taken potshots at various royals over the centuries.  Two deaths, one birth.

The other day, walking around Thessaloniki – a city which has suffered more than its fair share from the conflicts of the 20^th century – it occurred to me that perhaps we have needed a hundred years to make our peace with 1914. I know this is a thought based on instinct and not on science, but bear with me.  Count a generation as thirty years and a century roughly equates to three generations.  My four grandparents were all born before or during World War I; at least two of them were old enough to remember it though none, thank God, were old enough to serve in it.  Now my grandparents are dead, and that generation is gone.  There are no World War I veterans still alive.  From here on out, our understanding of that war will be at a remove.

Hearing about the 1917 fire that devastated Thessaloniki and the outfall of the breakup of the Ottoman Empire and the population exchange of 1923 that seemed like some politicians’ idea of a solution to religious conflict (hint: it wasn’t) and the German occupation during WWII and the rounding up of the Jews who had made Thessaloniki their home since their expulsion from Spain in the 15^th century … any one of these events could have put paid to the city and yet, somehow, it survived, adapted, endured.  Perhaps the city takes its lessons from the traces of people who have gone before: the Byzantines, the Romans, the Macedonians.  Given enough time, the edges of the past can be smoothed out.  Still present, but no longer capable of causing so much pain. 

Standing in the crypt of St Demetrius’ Church, where you can see traces from the multiple cultures who have inhabited Thessaloniki, I had a sudden, strong instinct that the passing of a century might clear a bit of space around the memory of 1914.  Give it some distance that would allow fresh air in to heal some of the wounds. 

They say that it takes a year before we really start to come to terms with the death of a loved one.  A year of events and anniversaries (birthdays, holidays, Christmas) to come and go before we lose the cold-water flinch when we are, once again, hit by the shocking realisation that someone is no longer with us.  And now we have had a hundred years of the 28^th June signifying – not the outbreak of the most devasting war the world had witnessed to that point – but the date of birthdays, weddings, holidays or even just happy, normal, event-free days. 

Anniversaries – both the public and the private – are important.   I was always struck by the decision to have the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on the 28^th June 1919: a conscious acknowledgement of the symbolism of the date, an attempt to cauterise the wound.  Five years was optimistically soon, but after the commemorations of the centenary of WWI pass, I think the significance of the date will also change.  Its meaning as the harbinger of a long century of conflict will fade into history and, over time, some other event will take place on this date and that will be what we remember.  For me, ultimately, the coincidence of public anniversary and birthday is a reminder to celebrate life and the good things it has brought.