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Restless and dissatisfied - a kind of lunacy

27/7/2013

Bedtime reading!

I woke up this morning feeling restless and dissatisfied
– a horrible state of mind that comes to visit from time to time. Not too often, thankfully – most of the time I’m pretty grateful for each day, and keenly interested in people, places and things. But now and then this tips over into a negative state of mind – when the huge amount of stuff available becomes an overwhelming flood, and I can’t decide what to do
next.

I know having too much choice is a high-class problem. I hate it when I am saddled with the monkey-mind and can’t enjoy anything because I’m looking at all the other things I should/could be doing. It reminds me of when I was in my teens, and whichever party I was at, the action always seemed to be at the next one …

There are various antidotes for this – I can get out of my head and do something nice for another person, I can be still and connect with my Higher Power, I can decide on one thing to do and choose to be happy with that. Usually the first step in all of this is acceptance. Railing against myself doesn’t help!

I have a quote from Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now on my fridge door:

“The modalities of awakened doing are acceptance, enjoyment and enthusiasm. Each one represents a certain vibrational frequency of consciousness. You need to be vigilant to make sure that one of them operates whenever you are engaged in doing anything at all – from the most simple task to the most complex. If you are not in the state of either acceptance, enjoyment, or enthusiasm, look closely and you will find that you are creating suffering for yourself and others.”

I heard someone say once that the amount of information in a Sunday newspaper (and its tree’s worth of supplements!), is as much input as the average person in the Middle Ages would have known in a lifetime. No wonder the top of my head sometimes feels like it’s going to explode! My bedtime reading is a good example of the too-much-itis to which I am prone. I’m currently reading five books: What the Grown-Ups Were Doing by Michele Hanson, Man and God by Victor Gollancz, Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon, The Diary of Samuel Pepys – Volume III, and Waiting for the Night-Rowers by Roger Moulson. Recipe for over-stimulation? No wonder I couldn’t sleep one night this week!

The full moon was up that night, and there was an interesting item on Radio 4 about new research, which indicates we may be more connected to the phases of the moon than previously thought. Not news to me – I’ve always noticed how crazy some people’s driving gets around the full moon. And I’ve met a number of nurses who say how much more disturbed psychiatric patients are at these times. But what really caught my attention was a writer who talked about the old lunar-time modules for living, still in use in some parts of the world, and how much slower and more attuned to nature they were, and how perhaps today people just stuff too much into their days. That really spoke to me. I am a list-maker, my To Do List frequently has over 25 items. There are things on there that more often than not just get transferred onto the next list. My current one includes quite a few of these victims of procrastination:

Re-pot basil, lavender, rosemary, plant pink
Sign up for Brighton 10K
DUST!
Tidy and file piles
TAX RETURN!

Perhaps it’s time to pick up my battered old copy of Meditations for Women Who Do Too Much by Anne Wilson Schaef. My dear husband, who knows me so well, bought me this some years back, and wrote on the inside cover: “When I picked up this little book it said ‘Buy me for Judith’. Hope you enjoy.” He drew my attention to the entry for August 15th; it’s still a favourite, and I hope Ms Wilson Schaef won’t mind me quoting from it here:

“Some of us have modelled our lives after the roadrunner cartoon character: jump out of bed – beep, beep. Throw in a load of laundry so it can wash while we do our exercises and shower – beep, beep. Nine minutes for make-up and hair – beep, beep. Seven minutes for starting the coffee, getting dressed, and popping in the toast. Five minutes for eating breakfast and making out a list of things that must be done today – beep, beep. Throw laundry into the dryer, grab coat, purse, and briefcase, and burst through the front door – beep, beep. By the time we have finished our morning routine, most people would be exhausted, and we have just begun – beep … beep …

Perhaps it is important to remember that I was not created to be a roadrunner, even if we have some features in common.”

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Running in the Olympic Park

22/7/2013

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The pink wave on its way!

When a fellow Sarah's Runner put a link on the group's Facebook page about the forthcoming National Lottery Anniversary Run in the Olympic Park in Stratford, which would finish its 5 mile course (the last 300 metres) in the Olympic Stadium, I signed up immediately! Too good a chance to miss, and it was a way of making amends to myself for not having been to any of the Olympic or Paralympic events there. A whole bunch of us travelled up to London yesterday, and I started off the run with friend Gareth, who is wearing his SRs t-shirt in the picture. I'm the half-pint next to him! We were in the pink wave, which was the last to go, part of a mass of 12,500 runners taking part. It was wonderful to take part, and especially to be among a great stream of runners winding its way alongside the River Lea, and, for me personally, probably the first time I've ever run in a stadium, let alone such an illustrious one! Big shout out to all my fellow runners, it was fab seeing you all there!

The celebrity runners included Paula Radcliffe and Victoria Pendleton, and Sir Chris Hoy opened the proceedings, but the most memorable thing for me was shaking the hands of the Paralympics medal-winners who sat waiting in their wheelchairs at the finish line to congratulate the runners coming in. That was something special.

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The Sorrow of the Moons

14/7/2013

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Henry Moon

I think there's a Chinese saying that goes something like "May you never have sons in times of war".

Walter and Anne Moon, of Western Road, Southborough, had four sons away fighting in the Great War.

Henry, a Gunner in the 4th Brigade of the Canadian Field Artillery, died, aged 22, on 2 June 1916.

After he left St Peter's School at the top of Southborough Common, he had first worked locally as a telegraph messenger at Southborough Post Office, and the local press reported he was "the first member of the Hand and Sceptre Lodge of Oddfellows to give his life for his country".

He had been in Canada when war broke out, one of many young men who had left Britain in the first decade of the twentieth century, hoping to make a life for themselves in the Dominions, as they were known at the time. When he signed up in Toronto at the end of 1914, he gave his trade as Fixture Builder. In a letter to Mr and Mrs Moon, written on the day Henry (referred to as Harry) was injured, a Canadian chaplain wrote: "I know you will be very much disturbed and anxious to hear that Harry has been wounded. He asked me to write and tell you about it, as he will not be able to write himself for some time. The Battery where Harry was, was heavily shelled today at noon, and Harry, unfortunately, was hit by a small splinter on the lower part of the chest on the right side. Our Medical Officer was away when the word came to our Brigade Headquarters only a few hundred yards away. I got the Medical Sergeant, and we went over with a stretcher. We put a dressing on his wound and carried him on the stretcher down the road, where an ambulance and doctor met us. The doctor redressed his wound and sent him off to the Hospital, where I think they will operate to remove the splinter. He was very brave and bright, though he was suffering a good deal. He will probably be laid up for quite a while, but the doctors do not anticipate any danger." But Henry died the following day in hospital, and was buried in the adjacent cemetery at Lijssenthoek, near Poperinge in Belgium.

Walter Moon

Henry's older brother Walter had signed up in September 1914 and was serving as a Lance Sergeant with the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry in February 1916, when the local paper reported on Walter's close shave: "...home from the Front on leave ... his first experience under fire was at the Battle of Loos ... while walking through a wood he paused a moment to speak to a Sergeant of the Canadians, and a German sniper fired at them. The bullet struck sideways on a pocket-book in Sergt Moon’s breast pocket, was deflected by the frame of a miniature in his pocket book, and wounded the Canadian in the lung. Our representative was shown the pocket book and the miniature with the mark of the bullet. Sergt Moon is full of praise of the arrangements for the comfort and health of the men in the way of food, clothes and baths. He had only once been short of food, which was during the Battle of Loos, when it was impossible for the convoy  to come up owing to the heavy fire. They had then to depend on the emergency rations carried with them, and Sergt Moon says that that meal of “bully beef” and biscuits was the best and most welcome he had ever had."

But Walter's luck didn't last - he died aged 23 on 4 July, a month after his brother Henry, several days after being wounded, and is buried in Heilly Station Cemetery, Mericourt-L'Abbe, in the Somme.

Charles Moon

Mr & Mrs Moon's third son, Charles, worked before the War as a footman for the Nicholsons, of Bidborough Court, a local 'big house'. He joined up in August 1914, and in a letter to his mother in June 1915, while serving with the 6th Battalion of the Queen's Own (Royal West Kent Regiment), enclosed a card he had received from the Major-General commanding the 12th Division, on which he stated his pleasure at hearing how Corporal Moon (then Private) had distinguished himself by his conduct in the field. Charles had been given special leave earlier, in April because of his Military Medal.

John Moon

Henry and Walter's younger brother John was employed after leaving school by Mr H Hemsley, bootmaker, of Crescent Road, Tunbridge Wells. He joined the Royal Naval Division in October 1915, a week after his 18th birthday, and was initially attached to the 5th Nelson Battalion in the Eastern Mediterranean Squadron, “somewhere at sea”. He joined the Anson Battalion at Mudros, Turkey, and then served on the Western Front.

It is awful to imagine how desolate their parents must already have been feeling after the deaths of two sons in June and July, when the following month, on a Tuesday morning in August, Mrs Moon received a letter informing her that Charles had died on 14 August, aged 21. She had already had news of his wounding from Corporal Jenner, from High Brooms, who had been serving as a stretcher-bearer out in the Somme, and had picked up Charles, who had lost a leg, and carried him to the dressing-station.

What Mrs Moon was not to know until four days later was that her youngest son John had been killed in action on the same day that Charles had died. She heard the news in a letter from Lieut J Gilliland, OC “C” Company, Anson Battalion, BEF: “Dear Mrs Moon, I am awfully
sorry to have to write and tell you your son John was killed during a bombardment this afternoon. I know how terrible this news must be to you, but in your great grief it must be a consolation to you to know what a splendid soldier your son has proved. He joined us on the 22nd March, and we all very soon got to know his cheerful and manly disposition. It will console you, too, to know his death was instantaneous, and that he had no suffering. He will be remembered by his friends in “C” Company, who are very numerous."

Like so many of these endless letters home which weary officers were duty bound to write, it may have tried to paint a kinder picture than the reality. One account stated that John was killed by a rifle-grenade, and another that it was a German shell in the front trenches that brought about his death.

The local newspaper reported that "Mr Moon has been ill himself for some months, and is now in Bath Hospital, where Mrs Moon will have to travel to break this terrible news".

John's grave is in Tranchee de Mecknes Cemetery, Aix-Noulette, Pas de Calais, and Charles was buried at Warloy-Baillon Communal Cemetery Extension, Somme, some 40 miles south
west.

I walk past their former home in Western Road often, and wonder at how much sorrow there must have been within those walls in the following years, and sadly, how much grief is still felt in soldier's homes today, when bad news arrives from Afghanistan.

The Moons lost two nephews, Christopher Moon and William Moon, in the following years, and, in September 1944, another member of the extended family, Ronald, then serving with the Parachute Regiment, was to die in action, aged 23, in Holland. These, and the Moons of Western Road, are all commemorated on Southborough War Memorial.

Harry Patch, the last surviving British soldier to have fought in the trenches of World War One, who died in 2009, memorably said: "Why did we fight? The peace was settled round a table, so why the hell couldn't they do that at the start, without losing millions of men?"

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Restless and dissatisfied - a kind of lunacy

Running in the Olympic Park

The Sorrow of the Moons

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