The Loose Bloggers Consortium said: Write about culture. The Fountains Abbey pub opposite St Mary’s Hospital immediately came to mind. A plaque on the wall claims that the bacterium that led to Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin could have wafted out the pub window along with beer fumes, across the road and into the window of his office – leading to the contamination of the culture in his petri dish. The rest is medical history. (And good news for some of my World War Two relatives.)
But I saw a different memorial more recently. While I was joining the great and arty to commemorate Ted Hughes the other day, a stone in memory of people who served in Malaya caught my eye.
The inscription read:
To commemorate the work of all those men and women of the British race who served Malaya 1786-1968
They shall come from the east and from the west and shall sit down in the kingdom of God
The pic I took was too rubbish to show you. There are better ones here, along with one of the Queen Mother unveiling it.
But the inscription raised questions for me. The British race? What is it? Continue reading
Blackwatertown 