ANZAC Dawn

Like many regions of the world, Canterbury is peppered with war memorials. They honour those young people who were shipped off to be brutalised, and never made it back.

We have memorials from the literally triumphal, to the elegant and heroic. As you move out from the city the gestures are less grand, but if anything more poignant.

(I have links for these things, but blip won't let me enter them.)

In Sheffield you can see a more practical hand at work. Not a Memorial Hall, but a Memorial Pool. With a Queen Carnival and a gift of land from the district's founding family, the town gained a place of light and air.

It's a focus for teenagers on summer holidays, a school pool - a place of laughter and squeels, splashes and the twang of the diving board. A place of joy.

A place that's as far from war as you can get.