Sitting outside at times like this, I think of the soldiers in WW1...

Boys far and away from home, in long graves cut out of the cursed mud, crammed with bodies and blood and gore.

Shellshocked from the constant cacaphony of whizz-bangs, the relentless drumming of endless mortars, turning farmlands to Mordor, murder fields where generations were wasted, butchered as lambs for the whims of those who sipped brandy in heated rooms.

So maybe, for a few scant minutes, step outside in this bitter cold and imagine a place where your forebears might be stuck, with no warm hearth to retreat to.

Or sit out in the cold for an hour or more, Feel the fell clutch of General Winter seep into your toes and fingers and raise a glass to those boys, on both sides, who sat in frozen trenches while leaden death screamed from just atop the breastworks.


We live in halcyon days, lads.
We haven’t known how cold it is when the only respite you have from the cruel winds of winter are the walls of earth mingled with the blood of fallen friends. We haven’t experienced what it’s like to see the snowflakes bury frozen corpses, and all you can do to fend off the bitter ice in your bones is to fire off a few rounds and clutch close to the deadly heat of your rifle.

We are the lucky. The so very lucky that our lines left those hells on earth and, scarred and scared and scattered as they may have been, brought forth a progeny that might feel a little cold in their bones and be able to flee to warm houses.



I freeze outside for a bit tonight, and drink French wine, and have a snowball (to be perfectly honest it’s mostly sleet, but she doesn’t care) fight, with my little girl. Because a little less than a century ago, men fought and died and more importantly, lived, through this frozen hell.

so here’s to warm beds. Here’s to strong booze. Here’s to good women. Here’s to sweet children. May they never know the sacrifices our forbears made to bring us to these golden years. And may we never repeat their follies.