Remembering

Christmas has come early in our home; we're sending out cards already. The reason for the premature posting is to include change-of-address stickers which will ensure that we won’t have to go to our old place to retrieve cards sent by people who don’t know we have moved. The stickers also mitigate the 'humbug' factor to which I am prone: it pleases me to be able to tack a practical function onto a customary activity of questionable validity (why would I celebrate the birth of the son of god when I don’t believe a word of it?). Despite that, I can't deny the indelible mark left on my psyche by years of traditional, family Christmases. Shared cultural history, after all, is what binds society and fulfils our need to belong.

The multitude of artificial, blood-red poppies spilling out of the Tower of London into the surrounding moat has been criticised as being too "pretty" to be a fitting memorial to those who died in war, yet its popular appeal is evident and may help to perpetuate the memory of those who died. On Remembrance Sunday I was present for part of a ceremony held outside our Town Hall. Not close enough to see or hear the homage, it was the sound of a canon fired to mark the start of the silence which really caught my attention. Canon-fire is something which troops must get used to but, for civilians like me, it is exceptional and dramatic. The sound exerted its authority: all stood still with heads bowed (except for a few tourists who had strayed un-knowingly into the scene). The occasion served me up an emotional bond with the fate of those - especially family - who died in service but it also reminded me how fortunate are the men of my own generation who were never required to put ourselves in that position.

Two days later, on Armistice Day, I was caught off-guard in Marks and Spencer's socks department having forgotten that the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month is earmarked for remembrance also. On this occasion there was no canon-shot: instead a 'ding-dong' followed by an announcement. The voice on the loudspeakers was not that of a grand establishment figure but of an ordinary-sounding female employee. It could have sounded mundane, but in the voice was such unaffected sincerity that its effect was as powerful as any canon-shot. The lights dimmed and all those around me stopped to observe the silence - with less ceremony but no less a sense of solemnity than had pervaded Sunday's event. Afterwards I heard someone complain that some "foreigners" had not observed the silence and that "they should observe our customs". But was this fair?

The previous day I had gone with a friend to Lancaster where there is a newly erected memorial to the African slaves shipped as part of its trade (before the River Lune silted up it used to be an important dock). We also took a walk around nearby Sunderland Point, a low-lying finger of land which extends between the Irish Sea and the estuary. The word "sunderland" means a place where people and merchandise can leave or enter a country and, sure enough, this is what it once was. Nowadays it's just an isolated, wind-swept place with a handful of houses and the remains of a wharf, but it is remarkable for one thing: here, on a patch of unconsecrated ground by the shoreline, is the grave of one of those slaves. They called him Sambo but who knows if that was his real name? His grave is modest but its symbolism is potent: he is just one of the many who suffer a lonely death a long way from home, family, friends and the culture to which they belong.