Two ends of the musical spectrum had their origins in Leyton, East London...Bobby Crush was born there and Iron Maiden were formed there in 1975. Now that would be an interesting juxtaposition, Bobby Crush playing Bring your daughter to the slaughter!!....for those of you who don't know who Bobby Crush is, here he is at his cheesy, grinning best... [video=youtube;EKF4HfwSsm0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKF4HfwSsm0[/video]
and so on to Coventry. Considering the pasting Coventry received from the Luftwaffe in World War II, it's interesting to note that one of the 'Twin Towns', since 1959, is Dresden
I went to Coventry during the Olympics to see Japan's Women v Sweden's Women and Canada's Women v South Africa's Women. Was quite an enjoyable day! Alas, Japan didn't win, but there was some good football on display! Weirdly in all the Olympic and Paralympic events I went to (two of which were at the Olympic Park), the longest I had to queue was at Coventry, you wouldn't have expected that.
My Grandfather was in the Buckingham Fire Brigade and they went to Coventry to help fight the fires there that night - some 50 miles away. I remember my mother telling me that they could see the glow of the inferno from Buckingham and that when he got back my Grandad wept and said, 'Coventry's gone.' Coventry may not have got the same 'pasting' as Dresden but it is was pretty complete and would have been as bad if the Luftwaffe had had the same firepower as the RAF and USAAF three years later. I hold no truck with those apologists for Dresden. It was war - total war - and, whilst abhorrent to us and hard to comprenhend in today's context, fully justified at the time.
Another 'whimsical fact' about Coventry, back in 2009, when I went to visit my then GF in Birmingham, we went to the cinema together and saw the film Nativity!, which coincidentally there is a sequel out in at the moment. It was quite an amusing film in a silly way, but it was set in Coventry!! That was also one of the two times I visited her which didn't end in her dumping me.
It means not talking to you - following taken from Wiki:- "To send someone to Coventry is a British idiom meaning to ostracise someone, usually by not talking to them. To have been sent to Coventry is regarded as to be absent. It is often used to punish people who, for example, refuse to join a strike. The Coventry referred to in the phrase is a cathedral city in the West Midlands, England"
Well, she didn't talk to me much after she dumped me the final time so I guess so. Met once at a mutual friend's birthday party, but while I wanted to still be friends, she acted all strange. I even sent her a message on Facebook saying that I hope we can still be friends but she didn't reply so that kinda spoke volumes. I deleted her off Facebook earlier this year as after all this time, I figure there's no point keeping her as we clearly weren't going to be friends again. I completely hate her for the way she acted when she dumped me the final time and the way she acted afterwards and the way she made me feel at the time, which was awful and I regret going out with her. Just before I deleted her off Facebook, I was tempted to post the song "Somebody That I Used To Know" by Gotye on her wall as it perfectly encapsulates how I feel/felt about her, particularly the second verse. Saying that, she helped to make the best day of my life.... 14th of June 2009. And up until the 1st time she dumped me, it was going great. Anyhow, sorry about that tangent, it's rather serious for a whimsical thread.
Perhaps. She was really attractive though. But that's one of the reasons why I'm so keen to find a GF.... because while she may have completely destroyed any feelings I may have felt towards her, I can't really move on or, to quote Florence, 'bury that horse in the ground' until I've found someone else.
I don't disagree. My point is that it is disingenuous for people of this generation to apply today's to something that happened in another age.
I must say I agree with LFiH on this subject. I'm thankful that I am too young to have experienced those dark days, but I agree that the values of war and its consequences cannot be measured by today's standards. At that time it was deemed to be an acceptable method of warfare by both sides and nothing any-one can say decades later will change that fact.
Not sure about that. It's taken 60+ years for Bomber Command to get a memorial statue built in central London, at least in part because of a sense of shame about the carpet bombing of German cities. The policy certainly did not have universal support at the time. Deliberately targeting the civilian population was as shocking then as it is now. You could say the same about Nagasaki and Hiroshima. The "ends justifying the means" debate hasn't really altered over the last few decades.
