Summer is holiday time and as I am sure you will have noticed I have been travelling around a bit over the last couple of weeks.
I am back in Bahrain now but think I might have an opportunity to slope off for another week somewhere before the schools start again.
As all of your friends and colleagues are also travelling, it means that you have long periods of absence from your usual social crowd. However, because of Facebook and everybody’s need to post pictures and updates every day of their trips you are still in regular contact with them.
This has a side effect in that you can sometimes be in the same town or city as one of your friends.
Last Saturday I was in London for the day and like many that visit, stopped off for a grape in Covent Garden. While there I posted on Facebook where I was and asked if anyone else was around. To my delight one of my Bahrain mukkas was in town and we managed to meet up in a hostelry later that day for a catchup.
Then there are all the missed chances when you discover that someone was there the day before or a day later. We don’t really need to see them while on holiday as we will no doubt be back in each other’s pockets in September, but it’s a laugh to meet up in different locations and compare how each other’s holidays are going.
Another advantage is that someone who was in a city before you can supply recommendations as to what to do. I was recommended to go to the IMAX cinema in London to see the film Dunkirk.
It is a very high quality film and on the huge screen you can see all the pimples on Kenneth Branagh’s face, however I was disappointed as there is no real story.
But it does portray the chaos and desperation of the evacuation very well.
While in London I also went to Trafalgar Square and saw the dissolving mud sculpture of a soldier, which was there to represent the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Passchendaele, the third battle of Ypres in the First World War. This battle lasted for about five months and resulted in approximately half a million casualties from all sides, and an allied gain of about five miles.
Much has been written about the horror of the First World War and its various horrific battles and now there is no one alive who participated in them.
I do hope that does not mean we forget the wholesale stupidity that caused it. The probability is that this type of warfare will never happen again.
This is not to say that nationalistic stupidity has been banished to the history books, but at least now we are developing robotic soldiers and so future conflicts may just be a bigger version of robotic wars, which of course will mean that the country with the biggest budget will win.
Then the robots will take over and we will have to send for Arnie to save us.