Here's where your Grandfather gave back to that woman her white feather, and married her nice friend; a reward in those days, for winning their freedom. Here's where your Auntie dodged a bullet from a raiding Junkers 88, as it fled from our skies back to Brunnhilde, and European slavery. Here's where your Father brought home your Mum, liberated from Il Duce, for the price of a bullet in the gut. Here's where that little girl drowned; all before you were born.
Here in our pyjamas, through the bedroom window, we heard the first cuckoo of spring. Here's where we ran from the farmer's shout, and learned to hold our breath. Here's where we caught sticklebacks and slow worms, and saw how things live and die. Here's where we asked for a penny-for-the-Guy, and discovered the smell of anarchy and jacket potatoes. Here's where they accused you of chopping off a dogs tail, and you burned with the injustice of that slander. Here's where you listened in hope for Dad's return, and learned not to fear death, but to hate it. Here's where they made you read and write, slowly, then surely.
Here's where you scored the winning goal, and shared the glory. Here's where we ran into the cold night air, laughing at anything; laughing at nothing. Here's where her freckles melted into your eye, and her smile lingered through space and time. Here's where we parted, never to speak. And here, in the woods, fields, streams, and 'blue remembered hills', lay what makes us what we are, root and branch. Here in Gethsemane, where, for thirty promises, some will betray our hard won sky to the fear of a thermal death. And here is where the butterflies of our shared memories will be broken on the wheels of outrageous Wind Turbines.
Here is the fulcrum between yesterday and tomorrow. Here is the fork between liberty and Robespierre, the thin line between love and hate. Here is where they threw us the apple of discord: “to the most politically correct”. Here is Occam's razor, where you and I must fight, toe to toe. Here is the anvil of our democracy, where the circle and the ellipse are being forged into a new Pavlovian sanity. Here comes a candle to light you to bed, and here comes a chopper to chop off your head: whumph... whumph... whumph...
