Bad experience? Just press delete.

How far back can you remember?

I can still feel the sun beating down on me in the garden behind our flats in Ealing, one of a crowd of children spending endless, happy days dreaming up games and shouting ourselves hoarse. My friend Rosalyn taught me how to do a handstand, and,skill mastered, I then spent that entire, sweltering afternoon perfecting the technique before staggering giddy and sunburnt back up the stone steps to our place on the top floor when Mum called us back in for tea.

That November in the same garden, doubtless inspired by those `light up the sky with Standard Fireworks` adverts,all of the families in the flats held their first Guy Fawkes night. The dads, full of beer and bravado, set rockets and bangers firing off at all angles, while mums with pinnies over their coats handed out hotdogs and sparklers to the children, beside the towering inferno that was our shared bonfire. Even though my face was burning from the heat of it, I stayed rooted to the spot. I was slightly fazed by the Guy`s ghoulish leer--right at me--but also too scared to wave the fizzing wand around in the night air like the other kids, in case it set my mittens on fire.It was all terrifyingly wonderful.

You want to remember times like that, don`t you, and have an automatic delete mechanism for the days which leave you feeling lost or lonely: bitter or bereaved.

I started thinking about the power of memory today after being reminded that it`s the 60th anniversary of Britain`s worst peacetime rail disaster today--at Harrow and Wealdstone. One hundred and twelve people died in that three train smash.

Today, survivors and local people have been back to the spot to stand in silence to remember those who got caught up in the horror.

I`ve just turned the house upside down to try and find a newspaper cutting from that day.It was either the London Evening News or the Standard, or maybe the Evening Star. We saved it because there`s a mugshot of dad as a very young PC, looking shattered. He was one of a vast army of people rushed to the scene to help. He`d been crawling through mineshafts at his local pit at 14, and so volunteered to crawl under a mangled train carriage in the tightest, darkest, most desperate of spaces to help those trapped He held their hands, offered words of comfort and in some cases, shots of morphine. He`d then been part of the gang who used their own broad shoulders and brute strength to raise the carriage a few precious inches to try and drag the casualties out.

Horrific memories.Sometimes the darkest of days, like the Harrow crash, have to be remembered and then investigated so that lessons can be learned. Often,thankfully,there`s now help for people whose traumas linger,and blight their later lives.

Dad`s in his eighties now, with a brain dulled by dementia.He`s sleeping so much, and often bewildered by simple tasks. I`ve written before about how we can still share a laugh and a memory sometimes if one flashes back into his mind. That young, heroic PC went on to be a royal bodyguard, travelling the world, Katmandu, Kuala Lumpur, San Francisco,Canada, Italy,Sydney, Canberra, Mustique, staying in glittering palaces and learning how the other half live. It`s those scenes I hope he can remember. And those Ealing bonfires.

But if his patchy,fading memory has been cruel enough to retain the images it logged at Harrow, sixty years ago today,I hope it can also still register the pride his family feel today, looking back. I`ll phone him later, just to be sure he knows.


Comments

Kerry ‏@kerry_pt3
@janemcintyre12 :) your blogs alway bring a warmth with them x

andy richardson ‏@andyrichardson1
@janemcintyre12 @BeBoldPR just don't get her started on chocolate

33m andy richardson ‏@andyrichardson1
@BeBoldPR @janemcintyre12 her blogs are good. almost as good as those by mr w

38m Be Bold PR ‏@BeBoldPR
@janemcintyre12 you're welcome. Always look forward to reading your blogs!

Armed and extremely fabulous

So did the royal pageant float your boat?

Or were you with the anti monarchists today, with their `Don`t Jubilee`ve It` banners?

From about the age of four, there was no doubt in my mind that the royal family was a good thing. You do, when your dad`s in the royalty protection team, working long hours, strange shifts, and entire summers away at Balmoral . Sometimes we got to visit him; stay in the area. I remember marching through deep, dark, pine forests, down to the rushing waters of the Dee, and finding out later that the small boy I`d been chatting to was Prince Andrew.

I always knew, of course, that dad would do anything for me, and my mum and my sister. But then to find out that he`d been selected as a personal protection officer, you realise he`d do anything for the royal family too...like... take a bullet for them. But you know he`s armed much of the time, so you hope it doesn`t come to that. And thankfully, it never did.

So today I spent much of the time not looking at Charles and Camilla weaving through the Piccadilly crowds...but trying to play `spot the bodyguard`. Not exactly difficult.... but I remember hearing so much about the do`s and don`ts. The people you watch; the sounds you`re listening for; the bigger picture.

There were plenty of times when I thought the royals saw more of dad than we did.It was probably true for a while. A royal wedding in Nepal here....trips to Mustique there...Sydney, Tasmania, Malaysia....places we could only dream about. We missed him. But were so proud of him.

And as I`ve mentioned before, the gifts he chose for us were always something special. And there were some members of the royal family who understood how much we`d missed him on long trips away. Twice we got invited for `supper` at royal palaces, to see some of the pictures they`d taken of their trip.

I mean-- HELL-- what do you WEAR?

We took advice on that; chatted, had two fantastic evenings and were made to feel really important. There were always Christmas cards from the royals; a garden party or two, and even boxes of apples from the Sandringham estate.

So, Ma`am. I hope you`ve had a great day. And I hope some of the family you have around you this evening reflecting on it, remember my dad....`McIntyre`, too.Tell them he`s been down at his local, scoffing a hog roast, and is settling down around now to watch a recording of you and the fabulous pageant from the comfort of his armchair.