Commemorating

The commemoration of an event means different things, in different ways to different people. I guess it depends upon your experience of the same event. Does an RAF air traffic controller have the same experience of a conflict as an infantryman? Of course not, in the same way we are all ‘wired’ differently so that what is traumatic for one has no effect on another.
But we remember and that is what is important.
Which brings us today we gathered at the Mission To Seamen Memorial Gardens inside Falmouth Docks to remember those events of forty years ago in the South Atlantic.
Falklands Forty
A simple and moving service followed by a pasty and coffee with the opportunity to catch up with friends not seen for a while, friends seen regularly and to meet new friends.
The sun shone, too hot maybe, inside the Mission the heat from a box of pasty’s with the heat generated by the number of people made standing outside in the midday sun a more tolerable option. So we gathered and chatted like veterans have done down the years, in that easy way, about the good times and the fun, you could hear the laughter and see the smiles.

Home with feet sore from new ‘formal’ shoes which are just that little bit too tight. I need to find my black boots and bull or polish them ready for the more formal commemoration of the end of hostilities next Tuesday.