A psychcologist I used to know once told me that most people have memories from much younger than they realise. However we grasp the concept of time through experience starting with days at a few months old and working towards years at about 3. This means that we dont have a ‘temporal’ framework with which to order our memories until about 3 and so don’t generally recognise our earliest memories for what they are.

This is compounded by the fact that children tend to remember different things to adults, so when people in later life recount such memories to parents, aunts, uncles etc, they tend to be dismisive (in the same way that elder relatives were to them), thus undermining peoples faith in their own earliest memories.
Steve.

Quite a few having my first cheese and pickle sandwich on the platform at St. Pancras station and being disappointed our train home had a steam engine and was not one of the gleaming ‘Blue Pullmans,’ on the other platform. (aged about 3).

And my uncle from Australia trying to get me to eat an orange segment covered in suger just before I turned 2. Both stand out though.

Steve.

Isn’t there a Tempest II being restored and the sticking point is the rstoration of its Centuraus engine?

Steve.

Hi Hurrifan,

I think whether something like this is a victory,defeat or draw depends upon ones’s viewpoint. Many people see Dunkirk as a ‘victory’, which in a way it was, but it was also the final act of a comprehensive defeat.

Certainly the Republicans got their Republic (victory?), but not for the whole of Ireland (partial defeat?), and the British government/empire managed to save face by retaining Ulster (partial victory?), and in doing so might well have saved Eire from an even worse civil war following independence (serendipity?).

Once again how we interpret this ballance between victory,defeat and draw boils down to our perspective. Perhaps the real art of the good historian to to stop being English/Irish/European/Black/Martian and find impartiality; something I for one find extremely difficult.

Steve.

It’s always worth remembering that throughout the recent troubles politicians, media and especially the military conveniently ‘forgot’ that Irish republicans (including the IRA) had already defeated us British in the early 1920’s.

Steve.

I think one of the key things this thread illustrates; is how the radicalisation of some groups within Islam against the West, is creating an equal and opposite radicalisation of some groups in the West agianst Islam.

The biggest problem is that few people have recognised this very worrying and exceptionally dangerous state of affairs.

Steve.

As I say to people who ask why I love aircraft; Most people have flown, but few have been FLYING!

What a lovely treat for them.

Steve.

Phrozenflame: Some people might tell you that World War II slowed things down, in that between 1939 and 45 normal politics effectively ceased; who can tell what would have happened had World War II not occured. But now we’re into the murky realms of counter-history.

The important thing is that the peoples of the Indian sub-continent rightly got self rule all nations deserve by right.

Steve.