Remembering

Two British military commanders from the Napoleonic Wars. In the foreground a statue of the Duke of Wellington on his horse Copenhagen. He was the victor over Napoleon in the last land battle of the wars - Waterloo. That's another big military anniversary approaching - 18th June 1815.
In the background the annual commemoration of Nelson's famous naval victory at Trafalgar - 21st October 1805. Every year the Nelson Monument on Calton Hill marks the battle by flying the signal flags that Nelson used to send his famous message before the start of the battle - "England expects that every man will do his duty". The signal was sent using sets of flags hoisted up the mast in turn. Certain words were listed in a code book using three digit numbers and were therefore represented by three different flags. For other words not in the codebook individual letters were represented by flags signifying the numbers 1 to 25 (it was decided that J wasn't needed). Although the message during the battle was sent using twelve separate raising of flags (as the word 'duty' needed spelling out) for the commemorative display the whole message is put up together.
I remember seeing these flags flying right back in my first autumn in Edinburgh in 1985 when I had only recently started work at Scottish & Newcastle in their old head office at the bottom of the Royal Mile. My route to and from work from the flat where I stayed for the first couple of months took me right past Calton Hill.
Another work-related memory was a Friday lunch with some of the people I worked with at the bank. We went out for lunches every month or so and on what turned out to be the two hundredth anniversary of the battle of Trafalgar in 2005 we found ourselves in the cafe in the French Institute, that seemed appropriate in an odd sort of way.
This day is also the anniversary of the Aberfan disaster, 21st October 1966, when a colliery spoil heap collapsed onto the village of Aberfan in South Wales. The village primary school was engulfed and altogether 116 children and 28 adults were killed. The subsequent official inquiry blamed the National Coal Board for extreme negligence, and its Chairman, Lord Robens, for making misleading statements in the aftermath of the disaster when he claimed the landslide was completely unexpected and unpredictable whereas there had been concerns raised before the disaster about the instability of the spoil heaps. Outrageously he refused to spend NCB money to remove the remaining tips above the village and raided the disaster relief fund for £150,000 to pay for the work. The fund had raised over £1.5million (well over £20 million in today's money). The incoming Labour UK government in 1997 repaid the £150,000, although didn't make up the loss of interest on the money. In 2007 the Welsh Assembly approved a payment of £2million to the disaster fund to fully recompense it for the money taken by the state at the time.
We drove past the village when I was staying with my Uni friend S who lives not too far away and from across the valley we could see the two long rows of arched graves in the village graveyard - a very poignant sight. I wonder if any blippers have taken a picture there today?