TAGGED AND BAGGED

Eve of War

Well, thanks to The UK Today for passing on Bloggerheads' original guided missive, I would seem to be obliged to at least attempt some kind of coherent answer to the question, "Daddy. What did you post when the war started?" Well, unfortunately my archives don't reach back that far into the dim and distant so I shall borrow The UK Today's admirable paraphrase of, "Daddy, what did you do when the war started?"


Fiendish. Such an uncompromising choice of tense.

I could tell him what I had done up to that point although the story would be too long or the list of achievements too damned short for this space.

I could even inform him of that which I had yet to do but the story of being presented with myself, sliced and diced and yet loved beyond measure is one which I am not sure I am quite ready to write.

Would that he had used the past continuous and I were able to relate just how, like so many others, I was sitting wide-eyed in front of CNN watching shocked and awed as several thousands of tons of exported democracy fell upon central Baghdad. I should have known better; after all, we had been here before but there was still that sense of disbelief, the feeling that after so many fuck-ups and failures, the bastards are at it again. And at it again they certainly were, that fucking chimp getting his strings pulled by those whose belief in geo-politics had survived even Afghanistan and our Tone on some kind of touchy feely crusade to rid the international community of nasty tyrants with silent movie moustaches. And as the lies were found out one by one and the lack of even a basic post-baboom plan became abundantly clear, all that was left was some kind of deranged repetition of the mantra, nine eleven, nine eleven, nine eleven...

And you know what the really sickening thing is for me to admit? It is that I can actually understand the motives behind the one and yet when I consider the other, I have no way to rationalise it nor even to lever it into some kind of accommodation with that part of me that finds such state sponsored throwing your fucking weight about just because you can absolutely abhorrent.

And yet I should turn myself to the matter in hand and a realisation infinitely more depressing than anything above. It does not help in the slightest that I am not alone, that I am probably representative of the majority in that when my daughter raises her eyes to me and asks, "Daddy. What did you do when the war started?", I shall have no alternative but to answer, "Absolutely nothing."


Now to tag some more willing (more or less) bloggers.

Roy
Jess
Roger
Alfie