Judith Johnson
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It's a Wonderful Life

25/12/2013

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We’ve quite a few family favourites among Christmas movies: Scrooge, with the marvellous Alastair Sim, Bill Murray’s updated Scrooged, Elf of course, and, dare I say it, the first two Die Hard movies! As a child, White Christmas was one of my favourites, with Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye. But perhaps the most meaningful to me is It’s A Wonderful Life. A box of hankies becomes more essential with each viewing – we are all generally sniffling after a few scenes.

I understand that Frank Capra’s film was not a big success when it was first released. Like one of my other long-time favourites, The Sound of Music, it is accused by its detractors of being clichéd and sentimental. But for me, like all good tales, it simply heightens the life of the story it portrays, and speaks to the heart.

Dickens does this too for me. The more life I experience, its joys and sorrows, successes and failures, the more I am moved by stories like those of Ebenezer Scrooge, and George Bailey. They are at opposite ends of the spectrum – Ebenezer having lived only for himself, closing his heart to generosity and love, George having foregone his hopes and dreams in the service of others, a man who could not put himself first when he perceived others were in need. They are both saved by a ministering supernatural being: the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future, and the Second-Class Angel Clarence. They share a common experience and their eyes are opened. Ebenezer Scrooge is transformed, redeemed, and becomes a man who loves to give. George Bailey sees that the love of his family, friends and fellow man is all that really matters.

I saw James Stewart once talking about It’s A Wonderful Life – how a number of people had written to him saying that they were at the end of their inner resources, and contemplating suicide, that they had seen the film, and how it had encouraged them to go on.

It’s a beautifully crafted film with a fantastic cast of actors – I understand Capra hand-picked every extra, such was his attention to detail. Some scenes, like the one where Signor Martini and family bundle into the Bailey car and drive to their new house, are reminiscent of a Brueghel painting.

Joseph Campbell said that we need myth to help us to fully understand ourselves. At this time of year, having grown up in mid 20th century Britain, not in a particularly religious family, but certainly influenced by the legacy of Christian teaching and customs, I like to set out my mother’s hand-knitted Nativity set and remember the Christmas story, make an effort to see loved ones, listen to sacred music and sing-along-a Handel’s Messiah.

Sometimes when I’m rushing around like ‘Roadrunner’ in that pre-Christmas build-up, I need to remember that presents, whether big or small, are not as important as giving someone your full and undivided attention – a thing children need above all else.

Whatever your spiritual practice, I hope you enjoy this festival of light at the darkest time of the year, and that 2014 will be a healthy and happy one for you.

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Shanks' Pony

16/12/2013

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At the end of last week I was due at a meeting down in the town. As I was expecting a low turn-out, my husband, who wasn’t going to be able to pick me up till later, suggested I might walk back if no-one appeared. I transferred the necessary items from my crazy-big shoulder-bag into a small rucksack, donned my trusty water-proof Lidl boots, picked up my Cormac McCarthy, and got dropped off at the meeting-place. I set up, waited half an hour, read my Cities of the Plain, then closed up and headed back home.

Samuel Johnson once said “To improve the golden moment of opportunity, and catch the good that is within our reach, is the great art of life.” I’ve been feeling a tad tired and grumpy the last day or so, cooped up in a small office with five others looking at a screen and making tiny wrist movements with a mouse, and under other circumstances I might have looked at a half hour walk on a damp winter evening as a drag, but luckily I saw it as a blessing.

Martin and I always walk on our holidays, and when courting, spent many happy days walking on the Gower coast. I took up running just under two years ago, and this has become a wonderful part of my life – I feel so much more connected to my body, and often feel it’s thanking me for taking it out into the fresh air and giving it a chance to breathe and get out of breath, to allow the blood to flow and the heart to beat faster.

My mother, now nearly ninety, used to walk three miles to school and back as a small child, and I’ve met others of her generation who had similar experiences. When our son was small we often drove up to High Beeches, in Epping Forest, on Sundays for a walk through the beautiful tall trees followed by a snack at the biker’s hut. Walking is a great joy – you can do it alone or with friends, and it’s free. There are so many public footpaths in the High Weald – I know I’d rather be walking under trees, looking across fields and listening to birdsong than tramping on a static running-machine. If I manage to get a little walk in before work, it always helps me get my day in proportion, and to right-size me in relation to the world around me. After all, I’m an integral part of the natural world, a human animal.

I once heard the German film director Werner Herzog talking on the radio about his love of walking, and how he had walked across the Alps to propose to his girlfriend. He also, when he heard in 1974 that an old friend was seriously ill and on the verge of death, walked from Munich to Paris to visit her, honouring his hope that she would still be alive when he arrived. He wrote of this journey in Of Walking in Ice, but sadly it’s out of print in the English version. If I ever get round to improving my German, I’ll buy it!

 


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Battlefields of the Marne

1/12/2013

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PictureChristmas box sent to WW1 German troops
Most British people are aware of the World War One battlefields of the Ypres Salient and the Somme, which have been immortalised in literature and art as well as in our history books, but many may not have much knowledge of the Marne battlefields. I certainly didn’t, so was grateful to be included in a familiarisation trip for a small group of battlefield guides, journalists and tour operators to the Marne last week. 

As I understand the Battle of the Marne, the larger force of the French army was assisted by the remnant of the British Expeditionary Force in preventing the oncoming German army from taking Paris. The BEF had been reduced to two-thirds of its strength after Mons, and General French had intended to return with them to England, but was ordered by Kitchener to go to the aid of their French allies.

Our first stop was a visit to the wonderful Musee de la Grande Guerre, in Meaux. This stunning collection of artefacts and original vehicles is based on over 55,000 items amassed by a local collector. The museum has worked hard to give a context to its displays, but to keep it accessible – they have clearly given a lot of thought to the exhibitions. For example, the mannequins have been modelled in white and stylised, to signify that this is not an attempt to make them wholly realistic, since nothing can truly convey the horror of the soldiers’ experience. Visiting children are also encouraged to touch the exhibits, and there is a marked route for primary school children which features the role played by animals in the war. As well as some excellently restored large vehicles and reproduction trench sections, there are a number of themed rooms in the museum: displays of uniforms, colonial troops, daily life of soldiers, armaments etc.

Highlights for me included: the original double-decker carrier-pigeon transport and 1908 Bleriot airplane, the stereoscopic slide show (3D glasses provided) of photos  on various themes eg gas, the Battle of the Marne; the Body & Suffering room, a smaller, more intimate and darkened space, with deeply moving films of shell-shocked patients, pictures of “les gueules cassees (broken faces)”, amputees etc
the trench-art, including musical instruments made from tin hats, Christmas boxes sent to German troops (not much German metal trench-art – this had to be sent home, desperately needed because of the blockade on imports by the allied navies); early attempts at metal body-armour, rejected because too heavy, looking more Roman/medieval than modern; flechettes, the first airborne weapon, little metal arrows dropped by hand from the early lightweight airplanes.


The next day we were conducted round a section of the battlefields by Frank Baldwin, a superb guide, steeped in knowledge, who also trains other guides, and is Chairman of the Battlefields Trust. When you have someone like this with you, it becomes possible to look at the fields and copses, the distant ridges, which today are restored to farmland, and understand the detail of how a long-ago battle was conducted. The Battle of Ourcq was bigger than Waterloo, with around 100,000 German troops versus around 250,000 French across a 10-mile front.  We visited the memorial to Charles Peguy, an internationally renowned poet and essayist, who died here on 5 September 1914 at the age of 41, and the mass grave where his remains lie with those of 200 other war-dead.

Among our party was a French writer and military historian. I asked him if he could recommend a French book portraying the First World War. I had long intended to read Henri Barbusse’s Le Feu, but Francois suggested instead Maurice Genevoix’s  Ceux de 14, and Jean Norton Cru’s Temoins, which analyses the collective oeuvre of memoirs by French authors.

We drove on through the beginnings of champagne-growing country, and stopped in Le Petit Morin valley, where nearly 20,000 British troops crossed. The German troops here were aiming to delay their advance, and they captured thousands of exhausted, starving soldiers who, after the retreat from Mons, blowing up bridges as they went, having scant time to stop, rest, and eat, simply fell asleep so deeply they could not be woken by their companions.

We stopped at La Ferte sous Jouarre to see the British Memorial to the Missing there, which commemorates nearly 4,000 officers and men of the British Expeditionary Force who died in August, September and the early part of October 1914 and who have no known grave.

And last, but not least, I was grateful to have the opportunity to visit the graves in the Montreuil-Aux-Lions British cemetery of two Southborough men, Charles Pankhurst and Stephen Funnell, both of whom died on 10 September 1914, fighting with the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Sussex Regiment. It wasn’t until I stood in the cemetery that I saw they were among a number of Royal Sussex men who died that day.

We wondered why it was that those lost on the Marne are not as significant a part of the Great War memory in Britain, and whether it was perhaps that they were part of the professional army and reserves, not the ‘butchers, bakers and candlestick-makers’ who came after? Charles Pankhurst had enlisted in 1906, had served in India for six years, and had the honour of being the gymnastic leader of the Battalion. Stephen Funnell’s parents, who lost their son when he was only 20, had his name inscribed on their own gravestone in Southborough Cemetery.

If you are visiting Paris, or taking the family to Eurodisney, you may find it worthwhile to include a day visiting the Marne battlefield and Great War Museum.

Further information:

Musee de la Grande Guerre, Meaux
http://www.museedelagrandeguerre.eu/en

The Doings of the Fifth Brigade by Edward, Lord Gleichen – e-book available free online thanks to Project Guttenberg:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/22074/22074-h/22074-h.htm

Frank Baldwin, Battlefield Guide
http://www.frankbaldwin.co.uk

Nothing in this World by Charles Peguy


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    Lifelong bookworm, love writing too. Have been a theatrical agent and reflexologist among other things, attitude to life summed up by Walt Whitman's MIRACLES.

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