In amongst all the birthday celebrations of the last few weeks of November was obviously Remembrance Day. My aunt posted a photo of the man she had been married to for just a year before he had a terrible accident whilst in the Navy. He was my uncle and I was two when he died. Just so sad for her to have lost him at the age of 21 and I know if affected my father and his brother dreadfully and of course his mother, my Grandmother. So I just wanted to post a photo of him – such a good looking man, It’s painful to imagine how his life might have played out had he lived….Lest We Forget:-
Sub-Lt Nigel James Campbell 1945-1966
We also had our book group last week and we discussed “Black Butterflies” by Priscilla Morris. We’d been to hear her talk at the Barnes Literary Fair a few months prior to choosing the book and she told us how the book had come about. Her Great Uncle had been an artist during the siege of Sarajevo and she’d initially tried to write the story as a memoir, but realised quite quickly that trying to stick to the finer details of “the truth” was going to be very difficult. So she turned it into a novel and made her main protagonist a woman in her 50’s. It was a fascinating story that gave us a much deeper insight into a period of history that we all remember, but didn’t know much about. The city of Sarajevo fell under siege in the spring of 1992 as violence broke out between the Muslims, Serbs and Croats.
Given the current siege going on in Gaza, it was very difficult to discuss and consider what those poor people were currently going through with the lack of basic provisions to sustain them. She describes them living under the constant shelling and gunfire and her descriptions of the historical facts and timeline of the siege and how they fought to stay alive were excellent and of course thoroughly poignant.
