I wrote this last night after seeing a lot of news during the day from the World Economic Forum in Davos.
I can’t quite remember how old I was, maybe six or seven – I can remember what we were doing in our school classroom, but I can’t remember who the teacher was when this particular thing went on. I think I was probably six or seven, maybe a year younger. The teacher had told us what we had to do – and although I remember all my teachers, I can’t in fact remember who she was on that day.
She told us that we were going to practice something, something really, really important. It was only a practice so everything was alright, but when the air-raid siren sounded, we had to be very sensible and quiet and we had to get underneath our desks. Did we practice before the siren? Did we get off our chairs and get under the desk so when we heard the real practice alarm we knew what to do? I don’t know. It was strange, but I think we were in a way quite excited. Most of our dads and maybe some of our mums had served during the war, my dad had been in the Parachute Regiment and he had told me about his adventures and taught me to do a parachute roll, jumping off the kitchen cabinet. So having an air-raid practice wasn’t exactly frightening, and it was something different and out of our usual regime.
We didn’t have a clock in our classroom but the teacher was looking at her watch. One of the teachers must have been outside their classroom because they began to ring the school hand bell and our teacher told us calmly to get under our desks – which we did. We were quite used to being on the floor – sometimes we all went to the front of the class and sat on the floor round the teacher and she read us a story. After a while the bell rang again and we got up and the teacher said well done and we sat in our places and got on with the lesson. There were other times when the sirens at the town gasworks went off as a practice, but I can’t remember us always getting under the tables. At secondary school I don’t remember having these sorts of exercise, but we had fire drills .
We always had the news on the radio at home, and much later, when I was older we had a television and watched the news every evening. We also had a newspaper at home, which I read (I’m pretty sure my sister didn’t) and I also did a paper round and would read the other newspapers as I walked between houses to deliver them. I was in my first year at secondary school when it was the Cuban missile crisis, and although I can’t remember any discussion at all from our teachers, or amongst each other, at home my parents listened to the news intently. I think in school we must have been aware of the tension and fear, even us, the youngest girls, and what a hero we thought John Kennedy was, who in our minds, saved us.
When we were in the fifth form, now called Year 11 there was another event with an international impact that was all over the news, the Six Day War. Of course the dreadful war in Viet-Nam had been continuing from the 1950’s, so I don’t know why the Six Day War made such an impact on us school girls. We were queuing up to go into our geography lesson and suddenly one of my classmates who had joined the school late, broke down in tears, sobbing almost hysterically. It shocked us because usually we kept our emotions well in-check, stiff upper lip and all that, but this sixteen year-old was beside herself. She was terrified that the Six Day War would presage World War III. It shook me at the time, it was nothing I had ever imagined. I patted her arm – and I guess the others gathered around her, trying to comfort her, and I too had a sudden shiver of real fear. I can’t remember any more from that incident – I think one of her friends took her to the sick-bay, but those feelings of unease and almost anxiety about the state of the world persisted – occasionally re-awakened by something I saw on TV or a film.
Obvious this was all a very long time ago and all sorts of things have happened in the world, many good and positive things, many sad and bad and terrible things. There are wonderful advances in science and medicine and education etc in many countries, but there’s still trouble, and poverty and injustice in others. However, I try to stay positive and optimistic about the future, despite the major international players sometimes seeming to be looking to their own good, rather than the good of all.
I shall be brief now, because I think You’ll understand without me going into detail. However there is now a major player on the field, who although democratically elected (apparently) to a position of great power, is blatantly attempting to set their own agenda for their own profit and self-aggrandisement. It may also be that there are other issues concerning aspects of their character which influences their behaviour. I don’t know, there is very little transparency. However, one thing I do know is that now is a frightening time we are living through, I can’t think of another more frightening time that I have lived through. I feel subliminally frightened, and can’t hide under the desk anymore.
Lois Elsden 