Whose Baby Are You?

[poliphilo]

Do you know who was President/Prime Minister the year you were born- without looking it up? Apparently Matt Drudge doesn't. I was scornful until I tried to answer the question myself.

I guessed Eisenhower/Churchill. Wrong. I was a toddler when Eisenhower and Churchill came in. The answer is Truman/Attlee.

I'm pleasantly surprised. I idolise the post-war Labour Government (which gave us the Welfare State) and I don't like Churchill (whose post-war administration was the vanity project of a senile old man.) I'd far rather be a post-war Labour baby than a Churchill baby.

Yay- Attlee!

Comments

[glitzfrau.livejournal.com]

Eeeek. The presidential election took place around the time I was born, so I'm guessing either Patrick Hillary or Erskine Childers. Probably Childers. Prime Minister of the UK... erm... who came before Thatcher? Callaghan? And US president... Carter? Nixon? When the fuck was Watergate? I'm going with Carter. And now, I will check and get back to you.

[glitzfrau.livejournal.com]

OH MY GOD I was wrong on each one! It was Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh was president when I was born, and he only resigned the year after. Childers was long dead at that point. Apparently, Wilson was UK prime minister. And Gerald Ford was US president, not for long though. Who are these people? Why have I never heard of them?

In my defence, there was a lot of political turmoil in the seventies. But STILL. I am crap. Crap.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Well, no this is emerging as a pattern. And it's obvious really, how can you remember what was going on when you were a baby? And why should you?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Childers? Didn't he write Riddle of the Sands? Or is this someone else of the same name- a descendant maybe?

[glitzfrau.livejournal.com]

His son. The first Childers was executed shortly after the foundation of the republic for being in possession of a weapon (an ornamental pistol given to him by Michael Collins, as it happened.) The second one died of a heart attack while addressing a conference of doctors in 1974, and never wrote any novels, though apparently he was reasonably popular.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Is that why we shot Childers? I knew we shot him for something.

I've never read Riddle of the Sands. I believe it's a paean to King and Country. A bit like Buchan. How odd.

[glitzfrau.livejournal.com]

No, 'twas us shot him, if by "us" you mean "the British" and not "the reading public", in which case I am included in said "us". He was shot by a Free State firing squad, ostensibly for the possession of firearms, but more likely because he was suspected of being allied to the anti-Treaty Republican side in the Civil War. Also, of course, because he had made enemies. More here: this is an American site, but it seems reasonably well-informed.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

And here was I bearing the guilt of his demise on my shoulders all these years.

Thanks for the link. I'd best go educate myself.