The Cenotaph, Whitehall

Amongst other things, I collect postcards of The Cenotaph.  I determined last year to thin out my military postcard collection, sold most of these on eBay for a huge profit and then, promptly started adding to my cenotaph collection.  You can see some of them - along with the disappearing pram - HERE.

I was in Westminster the other day and as the sun was out, thought I'd take a walk along Whitehall.  I thought that whilst I was there I'd see if I could pick up a modern postcard of the cenotaph.  Could I find one?  No I could not.  There were plenty of postcards of Westminster, the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, the Millenium Wheel, Horse Guards, but nothing at all featuring the cenotaph.

I've always sought in particular, early photos of the cenotaph; the first temporary model and then the version which stands there today.  However, it occurred to me, on my fruitless searches for a modern day cenotaph postcard, that it might not be a bad idea to try and find the most recent image on a published card.  In other words, try and ascertain when it was that the cenotaph stopped being regarded with significance.

When the first temporary cenotaph was erected it quickly became a symbol for national mourning.  It was unveiled in 1919 (see image above) and then later replaced by the cenotaph we see today, unveiled for a second time in November 1920. Just look at the banks of flowers around the cenotaph in the November 1920 image below.

Postcards of the cenotaph which appeared over the coming years were presumably saleable because for many people who had lost sons, fathers, brothers and husbands (not forgetting wives, sisters, mothers and daughters of course), the monument meant something. It was a focus for national mourning.

Today, sadly, the cenotaph is not saleable.  The First World War has all but passed beyond living memory and the youngest veterans of World War Two are now all in their eighties.  Tourists presumably aren't interested in an unsightly obelisk in the middle of the road and publishers of postcards apparently even less so.

Harry's bad day

Poor old Sir Harry Pearce KBE had a shocker of a day yesterday.  It started off with him being stuffed into the boot of a car, got momentarily brighter when he was sprung by members of his team, and then fell apart completely within the space of - if the TV show running time was anything to go by - about half an hour.

First of all, his unconvincing Russian-ex revealed that she had been playing him along for thirty years.  Then she told him that their son Sasha wasn't actually his son at all.  Personally, I'd have been quite relieved to hear this as he's seemed a nasty piece of work from the start.  Finally, as if those two bombshells weren't enough, his Spooks belle, Ruth, was stabbed in the lung with a piece of broken glass by nasty Sasha and died dreaming about a grotty house in Suffolk with peeling green paint on the front door.  I wasn't actually sure whether Harry's distress was caused by Ruth dying or by the stupidity of her buying a property that needed a lot of work doing on it. In any event, we did see him visit the property later, check the peeling paint, check the kitchen and then leave.  It was all rather strange.

Yes, last night was the very last (allegedly) episode of Spooks on BBC1 and it went out with the most convoluted of plots and improbable events.  On the basis of that performance, the team's retirement, let alone Sir Harry's, seemed well overdue.

Spooks needed

Good advert placement in this morning's METRO newspaper with MI5 recruiting for Data Analysis and IT Security. I'm not surprised. Anyone who has been watching Spooks on BBC TV on Sunday evenings will know that the resident data analyst, Tariq Masood, was bumped off a couple of weeks ago by a CIA agent (we think) wielding a poison-tipped cucumber or similar. Tariq was a genius at analysing data and could always be called upon to come up with precise information about anyone, anywhere in the world. In fact, so good was he that you'd think the department would have been stuffed without him. Not so by all appearances, and last night they were still managing to trace very short phone calls to precise locations in double-quick time.

Whether the advertised role is to to get involved with similar work, or to check and chase-up outstanding invoices is unclear; perhaps that's a question to be asked at interview.

A little corner of India

We went to a birthday party at the weekend; a party hosted by an Indian couple and patronised by Indian and Sri Lankan guests. In fact I was the only non-Asian there and for a minute, with the sun blazing outside, and familiar aromas coming from the kitchen, I could have been back in Bangalore again.

What I also noticed was the familiar turn of phrase; the little idioms which are commonplace in India but sound odd in conversation here. "I'm Anil Kumar" said one chap, introducing himself to me; a common enough form of introduction in India, but we'd rarely introduce ourselves in this country by giving first and last names. [Note, since advised by David, our convivial host, that these were in fact both first names].

And for some reason this reminded me of a misheard-name when I was talking to a chap called Eugene at my old company in India. I got to know Eugene very well and when I left India he gave me a very nice wooden backgammon set, a family heirloom which I still treasure. When I first met him he was explaining to me that he was a twin and that his brother also worked at the same company. "He's all over" he said to me.

Well I suppose he must be," I replied, "I expect he's busy like you and has to visit different departments."

"No" replied Eugene, "he's Ol-iver".