WßD ~ Part III Chapter Six ~ History Touches the Rudder 2025

Windsor Street Days

Elmfield Days

Part III

Chapter Six

History Touches the Rudder

I

WRITING this family history, and working through and cataloguing the family archive brings me into contact with personal facts and information of that period -1914 - 1953 - upon which I cannot always obtain an accurate perspective.

The last week has been tumultuous, and for the People of Afghanistan, devastating, following the ‘blitzkrieg’ by the Taliban insurgency and then the fall of Kabul yesterday, the country’s president fleeing without even informing his cabinet, and the chaotic scenes at the airport today.

That is why the Chapter image is of my father during the 1980s as a senior officer of police, at the height of his life, and safely guiding all of us, his family. It is good to see Dad in moments of doubt. All of us experience this, the world over.

II

I am writing this, of course, as a record for the family and our descendants. The physical shock I experienced on Friday, again on Saturday at its most severe, and to a lesser extent yesterday, resulted in very long periods of unwanted deep sleep. I do not intend to sleep.

I have slept well in the night. But for some reason, my body reacts like this, and I go out, like a light switch. I no longer resist it, because I realise it is a safety valve that enables me to ward off the return of the epileptic seizures of the past.

I think we call it these days, listening to one’s body.

III

Working out fund transfers to make some contribution to the plight of Afghan interpreters and their families so they can pay for their visas, marriage credentials and air tickets, heightens the alarm felt as I simultaneously watch the advance of a rag-bag insurgency - terrorists and thugs - that can only be called the visitation upon Modernity of the Dark Ages. As I wrote of the Taliban twenty years ago in a poem:

I will not bow the head
or bend the knee
to this 21st Century
Thuggery
This Nazism

IV

I am fortunate, to be able to discuss things with my friend Rita in Germany; likewise, to have the quiet and loving support of my family, my sisters - We Three - my brothers-in-law, my nieces, nephew and great nephews.

I do not discuss these things with them but knowing they’re just down the road, seeing the messages flying around the family, exam results and so on, reminds me how fortunate all of us are to live here, in one of the foremost and richest democracies in the world, and where we have complete freedom.

I cannot comprehend a ‘religious police’. But I can comprehend the knock on the door, the victimisation, the brutality, the deaths - all, so say, in the name of their deity.

To all in these islands who would have us adopt that religion, that dystopian onslaught and raping of conscience, I merely say, be warned, be away with you, do not come close to me.

V

Sitting earlier, as I drafted a letter to my MP, I chance-glanced at a flicker of light on the frame of my grandmother, one of my favourites, on the desk, for it is how I remember Grandma Webb. [i]

It was definitely not Grandma speaking! It was me trying to reason out the debacle of Afghanistan this week. How wonderful and strange is the mind and the intellect! How does that scripture go? It’s years since I looked at it … hang on … I run my eyes along the bookshelves of my mind … … ah, yes.

We are fearfully and wonderfully made, and that we know right well.

I’ll look it up in due course and place the reference in a footnote. [ii] It is not important. Religion, these days, causes an involuntary wretching.

Reader, this is how I like to write. I believe in spontaneity. By the way, you might think that line ‘quaint’ or ‘old-fashioned’. Sure. It would have been from the King James Bible (first published in 1611) which we learned at infant school in around 1958.

The thought went something like this, except that I’d attached Grandma’s voice to it …

“Ken!

In 1918 we thought we had solved the problem. In 1938 we realised we had not. In 1939 … well Ken, you know the history.”

VI

In my handwritten evening letter to Germany this evening, I explained to Rita:

“I thought much about this Rita. As well as all the international news reports, I've spent the day writing letters to members of parliament. And I realise that the world will only allow religious extremism for a limited time. We do not know how the future will unfold... These were exactly the thoughts of Sebastian Haffner in Defying Hitler which he commenced in Berlin in 1932 and completed and published in London in 1938 after, thankfully, successfully seeking asylum; and also the riveting Berlin Diaries of the same period by the American diplomat in Berlin, William L. Shirer.”

VII

I am, therefore, heartened. This gave me the perspective to see, as it were, into and out through the other side, the present situation.

And I write this chapter of Windsor Street Days precisely because it aligns with my constant encouragement to widen perspective; to see beyond the strictures of ancient texts, out across the galaxy that men insisted was the roof, with nothing beyond except what they called ‘heaven’, into and out the other side of the known Universe, and with it the attendant Multverses, growing by the day, and now, way beyond into the UNIVERSE - that which none could comprehend when men decided to write what they were determined everyone must accept as their god having a very personal, private chat with them, for the benefit of all. Such people were only a step removed from ‘the Oracle’ of Mythology.

VIII

As we gaze we see dimensions. Our minds begin to think beyond three dimensions to a possible fourth - spiritual - dimension … but only for a moment. For, soon, we become aware of a thousand dimensions and more.

If in doubt, observe a square meter of grass, soil, tarmac, water, air even … be patient.

Within minutes you will see an entire world that, in many cases, you never realised existed alongside and all around you.

To the narrow-minded, to the savages, I say this : bring yourself into line with modernity. Mark well the triumphalism of Nazidom in June 1940. Then note their Reich in April 1945. Look across to the Pacific and Far East in 1941-1942 and see the triumphalism and the savagery that followed in its wake, as too in Europe. Note well the fate of two cities in 1945 in consequence of that misspent triumphalism and savagery.

Be aware of another ancient saying :

The Writing is on the Wall by an unseen hand

[iii]

Footnotes

[i] Isabel Alice Webb neé Budd

[ii] Psalm 139 : 14

[iii] Daniel 5 … King Belshsazzar’s Feast. The line is paraphrased.

23 April 2024
All Rights Reserved

LIVERPOOL

© 2024 Kenneth Thomas Webb

First Written 16 August 2021

Last published 9 May 2022