I tried to post a comment on Andy's Blog about becoming his "First Believer" I failed to get it to work as I suspect what I had written was to long, so I've posted my reply here.
What can I say from all the songs I listened to on the Splinters II page yours stood out. Graeme Dutton's I also liked but yours was for me clearly the best.
The other thing about your choice of subject is that by conincidence as a kid I did a project about the "Condor Legion". I was fascinated with World War II aircraft not so much the history but just the machines. I was obsessed with making models of planes and used to spend all my newspaper round money on Modelworld magazine and Tamiya and Revell model kits. I would drive my Mum daft with the mess from enamel paint on my clothes the carpet and furniture etc.
As I progressed through school and particularly studying History which I enjoyed a lot (still do in fact) and I was also lucky in having two excellent History teachers who were in my eyes were really "cool". I had to study the period leading up to The Great War as well as the period leading up to the World War II. As part of this study we had to each do a "project" that we could choose the subject of, as long as it related to the period before World War II.
I chose to detail all the planes used by the "Condor Legion". This was mostly because a) Almark's Modelworld magazine had done a series of articles detailing all the aeroplane markings and b) by doing lots of drawings of planes I wouldn't have to write so many words (I suffered with dyslexia as a kid) and as a bonus I like drawing so it wasn't exactly hard to see why this was what I did. Sadly I don't think I ever got the project back from the teacher or if I did I have no idea what happened to it.
Now at this time I was thirteen or fourteen and like most kids at that age you think you are invincible and will live forever and that things like carpet bombing such as happened for the first time at Gernika just didn't impinge on my consciousness. About this time though I did become aware of the Holocaust and the horrendous sufferring caused by war as a result of watching Jeremy Issac's masterful The World at War. Through the harrowing images of Auschwitz, the suffering of both civilians and soldiers on the Western front, I came to realise albeit in a limited way the horror of war.
Hearing your take on the bombing of Gernika, awoke all these memories. So thank you Andy for stirring up my old grey cells, as well as making me take another look at the history of that period.
All the best and hopefully a few more folks will soon become "believers" to.
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Hi :-) Thanks for the comment on the post about my Dad. Slight coincidence - I lived in St Andrews for ten years (and Glenrothes for two-shudders!) so I still think of Fife as home.
I love the way you wrote about your project & as a dyslexic myself sympathise with your reasons for choosing it.Funny how music triggers memory like that. I wonder if we can persuade Andy to tour Fife.... I'll see what I can do! LOL
Ah Glenrothes a wonderful place!
The first cycling club I joined (23 years ago now) on a Sunday Club ride we would often have to negotiate our way through the myriad of Glenrothes roundabouts.
When we reached the roundabout with the huge Irises (bought from the Glasgow Garden Festival) we would all give a cheer as we had managed to escape Glenrothes’s clutches!
It’s interesting how memory works, music, smells and even taste can all trigger powerful images and memories of events that happened in childhood. I was recently invited to the Scottish Malt Whiskey Society in Leith and since I am no expert when it comes to whiskey, I had a chat with the barman to suggest a nice peaty one for me. He came up with two one was just very peaty while the other was even more peaty but with a “burnt down building” kind of taste. Intrigued I had to try the “burnt down building” one, which triggered a memory of one of the first buildings I worked on when I was only 17 years old. Just as we had completed getting Planning Permission to extend this old Car Repair Garage there was an accident and it was badly damaged by fire. Once it was safe we had to survey what was left of the building and in particular measure how much was left of the old timber beams. Large timbers in a fire will char and this actually acts like fire protection and as they were substantial timbers we were able to keep them in place and reuse them.
Radio 4’s website is helping with a Memory Project that I should really go and checkout one of these days.
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