Making Plans

This past week I've mostly been consumed by the day job. But I am now on a much-needed holiday, which I'm doing in proper stay-cation style. Monday, I plan to see the poppies at the Tower of London before they get taken down, and then I'll be watching Interstellar in the afternoon at the Odeon. From what I've heard it needs a big screen and they don't come much bigger than there.

The rest of the week is going to involve chilling, before going to see a friend of mine who lives up in Derby for the weekend. I'm glad that the week has turned out to have a variety of activities in it, as I don't think I want to be sitting around thinking about things for the whole week. That path would inevitably lead to tears and feeling sorry for myself. I even had a little lump in my throat with the minutes silence held today for Remembrance Sunday. It's strange, the difference between knowing intellectually that people have lost loved ones to war, and knowing first-hand the pain of losing someone so close.

All this talk of the two world wars has also made me think that 2015 will be the year I finally go to Denmark. My grandmother, my dad's mother, was from Copenhagen and the Second World War had a devastating affect on her and the family. When the Nazi's occupied Denmark my family were involved in the resistance, as so many other Danes were. Unfortunately, all of my family, except for my grandmother, was killed or captured. All I know about what happened is that they were attending my great-grandmother's funeral when the Nazis came into the church and opened fire. My grandmother escaped and was in hiding for the rest of the war, until Denmark was liberated by the British. She met my grand-dad, who was with the Navy, they got married and my grandmother went to Irvine in Scotland, to wait for my grand-dad's return. She never talked about it and we're not even sure where exactly she was from; until her death bed my grandmother told no-one anything, and the details my mum managed to get are few and far between.

Dad was never keen on looking into what had happened to his mother's family. His attitude was to let sleeping dogs lie, a mindset I don't doubt he got from my grandmother. But the history buff in me isn't happy with that; and I feel like I owe it to the family to find out about them if I can. And in an odd way I think it might help me process that dad is gone. Even if all I get out of it seeing Copenhagen, it will feel good to reconnect with that bit of my lost past, and maybe a little side of dad too.

As they say at this time of year: "Lest we forget."

Stonehaven War Memorial, 2013