Things are dying. In the parks I mean. It’s that time of the year, isn’t it? When Winter casts about it’s first cold indifferent glances that say, Yes, I know the autumnal colours are pretty, so what? Their ass is dried up grass, and I’m a lawnmower! But it’s okay, there’s still beauty in the dead and dying…(1-8)

 They Come Transfigured Back
Secure From Change in Their High-Hearted Ways
Beautiful Evermore
And With The Rays of Morn
On Their White Shields of Expectations.

 This is the rather lovely inscription (9) by the entrance of one of my favourite local spaces, Walpole Park,I blogged about in  (Parklight) where today, the most vivid colours on display are in fact artificial, they being the bleeding red, black centred poppies of Remembrance. (10)
 
The inscription is dedicated to those in the borough who died in the two world wars. I have walked past these words hundreds, maybe thousands of times but have not read them before. I’m noticing things like this more these days. I recently saw another war tribute wall, at Liverpool St Station. I’ve been there countless times and just walked past it. But. like I said, I’m noticing these things more…(11,12)
 
Maybe there’s a TV show idea in this. Adopts the Sniper Position- Bring on The WW1 Wall.!
 
So, Remembrance Sunday it is, but I forgot. About the 2 minutes silence, I mean, not the whole thing. I was on a tube earlier, poppy in my lapel but not aware of the time. Oh well, I was by myself so I would have been silent anyway..I’ve never been that fussed about it all to be honest. Maybe if my old man had been killed in the war then I would have been, but he wasn’t. He was just wounded. Yeah, in France it was, in WW1. That’s right, it’s not a spelling error, WW1. The First World War. But Mark, I hear you cry, you might look a bit rough but you don’t look that old! Hang on, I’ll explain in a minute.. But first, another memory interrupts my train of thought..
　　
This one all the way from 25 years ago when I was working in telly and I went to, what was then called East Berlin. For there it was, in 1984 that I stood small against the backdrop of one of the largest War Memorials in the world. The Mother (Russia) of all War Memorials, in fact; Treptower Park. An awesome place. Built to commemorate the 20,000 Soviet soldiers who fell in the Battle of Berlin in 1945. A breathtaking collection of massive sculptures and 16 sarcophagi, one for each of the Soviet Republics, and final resting place for 5,000 of the Red Army. I repeat, awesome.

 It’s 20 years ago this week since the Berlin wall came down. One of my main memories of the Wall is the graffiti, which covered it in parts. MUFC (Manchester United Football Club) Rule, sticks in my mind for some reason, as it seemed ridiculous in context. I remember the border guards, of course, in their towers and on cherry pickers standing, machine guns at the ready, scanning the area for would-be escapees. Going through Checkpoint Charlie was a bit tense. Me and some others went through fairly quickly, but the cameramen were detained, their equipment searched, picked apart.

 East Berlin. Architecturally it was looming, grey austerity as far as the eye could see. The buildings all frowning slabs that said, none of your fancy western ways here. And the same look from the military who seemed to be everywhere. It was other-worldly and eerily quiet at night. No shouting, no drunken revellers. We went in bars and talked to folk, some wanted to live in the West, to be free of constraints, others thought the West corrupt. Some of these kids were there because on the night the wall went up,  their grandparents hadn’t wanted to leave their furniture behind, so their families stayed and had had vastly different lives to those of their neighbours who’d crossed over. It was a remarkable place, it really was. There were department stores with fancy clothes and luggage in the windows but none of it available to buy inside. Just a showcase for Western visitors, we were told dismissively by some locals.

 In the middle of the city was a tall building, the Press Centre which looked a bit like the old Telecom Tower in London. In the fat part was a revolving restaurant with sloping windows and there it was one evening, that the young me sat drinking Soviet champagne and turning slowly 360 degrees whilst staring out at the illuminated cityscape of East Berlin. It was one of the most starkly stunning sights I’ve ever seen. Like science fiction. I wasn’t into taking photos then. That’s’ fine. Sometimes memories are better…

 Back in the West, we went into a punk cellar bar, The Ratzkeller, where there was indeed, a young german punk with a live rat perched upon his shoulder. The celebrated would be pop-star and ex smackhead, child-prostitute of the day, Christiane F, sat in a corner with her entourage. The camera crew set up their equipment, the punks became aggressive, tried to knock a camera over. It was time to leave..
 
Did I prefer the Military watched-over grey civility of the East or the freewheeling, dangerous decadence of the West? As a visitor, the East was more memorable. But then I didn’t have to live there…

 Back in Ealing, where I live now, I was telling you about my dad, Corporal Harry Hurst of The Lancashire Fusiliers, who fought and was wounded in France in the first world war, aged 19. He was born in 1898, whilst Queen Victoria still reigned. He was 62 when I was born, my mum only 38. Nowadays we’re used to blokes, especially celebs and actors with their younger spouses, having kids late. Seventy is the new Sixty, they say, but It wasn’t usual back then and I used to be embarrassed about having an old dad.
 
So at 15, my dad lied about his age to get into the army. Strange to think that when I was that age, I was lying about my age to get into the cinema; to see the X-Certificate Way of The Dragon, with Bruce Lee. In ridiculously high platform boots and a bit of my sister’s mascara on my top lip (I shit you not). But I was fooling no-one. My older mates got in and I went home to kung-fu the settee. Something had to pay.

 At 62, my father was not some doddery old thing. No, he was a tall, broad shouldered, straight backed man with a shock of grey hair. He was hard as nails. Victorian. Never came on holiday with us, was a bastard to my mum and once took a strap to my leg,  another time, a slipper. Oh there were no regular sustained beatings or anything like that, just a couple of times when I pushed it too far..My best memories of him are when we would watch Saturday afternoon wrestling on telly,  then we would go at it ourselves, I was always. Mick Mcmanus. And at night, getting chin pie. Chin pie was the name he gave to rubbing his grey spiky stubble against my soft cheek.

 The problem with having kids late, of course, is that you are knocking on a bit and so it was that he died when I was only ten. The war spared him but the cancer didn’t. In those days, when there was a funeral in the community, friends and neighbours would line the street to watch the procession leave the house. I asked my mum if, when we went outside, could she try not to cry, cos it would show me up. Kids eh? They deal with death in a different ways. No sobbing and flinging their selves on the coffin. Come on, I was only ten, I didn’t know i'd done a a bad, bad thing. And she didn’t cry, or she hid it well. She did that for me. My mum died at the same age as my dad, just before her 72^nd birthday.

 So as I was saying, wounded in France, he came back, not transfigured but disfigured. There are several war photos of my dad, all in a big tin at my sisters’ up North. One in particular I remember is a sepia tinted picture of him in a hospital for the wounded. His hand was badly damaged with several fingers missing. He used to tell me jokingly that he saw a German sniper so he gave him the V for Victory sign. The sniper was that good, he shot dad’s finger off. So he reversed the sign, to say f off and he shot off the other one. What really happened, he never said. It’s a cliché, but true, that most of them that came back didn’t talk about the war. Either too horrific or they were embarrassed cos they hadn’t been in the thick of it. I have vague memories of some of the old soldiers in the local social club. One might say something about the war and they’d all give each other a look. A bit like the Hilary Briss in the League of Gentlemen would give his ‘special customers’ as if to say, not here, not now. Just leave it..

 I don’t know why, given my heritage, that I wasn’t more interested in the great wars, but there you go. I've been always anti-war and not into anything military at all. Just the obvious stuff really, like many other people, I loved Sebastian Faulk’s Birdsong, I was blown away (unfortunate phrasing) by the first half hour of Saving Private Ryan. I was grimly fascinated at the time to read how the sound department spent weeks firing live ammunition into (dead) cows and clothes, to make the bullets sounds as authentic as possible. Then a few months ago, I visited, for the first time ever, the Imperial War Museum. And I found myself returning to the Trench Experience a couple of times, despite my son’s protestations, we’d seen it already, he wanted to eat, but I wanted to linger. To try and experience something, anything of what my dad felt and smelt..
 
Maybe they should have a themed restaurant at the museum, that serves wartime ration food. Or just a normal restaurant called Dim Somme..
 
At the park gates I take some pictures of the war tributes, crosses and wreathes of red. (13-15) I think of my dad, born in 1898 and my son, born 100 years later, in 1998. They never knew each other. Me in the middle. The connect. I can’t wait to see the boy tomorrow. Maybe I won’t shave so I can give him the hereditary chin pie. Maybe, if I’m not feeling too tired, we’ll wrestle a little. And he will play Call of Duty war games on his Xbox...

 I think of my nephew, going out to Afghanistan for the first time soon. He goes willingly, make no (spelling) mistake about that. But we are all worried and we hope and wish that he will come home, transfigured back..The aftermath for those who see action is different now too, where in the past there was shell shock, so now there is Gulf War Syndrome. A modern illness for modern times. Like my own Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, my war, And sometimes, when feeling sorry for myself about it, I think, I'll deal with it like my dad did in his joke. Give it the peace sign. Then tell it to fuck off. 

 I look away from the park gates. Away. I go, transported back.. I am sitting on my dad’s knee, my small hand in his ruined one. Playing with the stump of his finger, liking the feel. I raise my head up, he lowers his and I feel the hard grey bristles scraping my soft pale cheek. It feels nice. Chin pie. I climb on to his back, my arms around his broad shoulders. I am inches from the already malignant cells slowly mutating in his lungs, that will eventually take him from me. We wrestle and I squeal cos he’s heavy handed and presses too hard. Then mum walks past, paying us no mind, and I call out to her. Mum...She looks. Look mum, I say,  It’s alright... It’s alright to cry…I’m not embarrassed anymore…