A Forgotten Hero

This weekend is a Bank Holiday- so called because the banks are closed. In other countries they celebrate religious festivals and the anniversaries of great national events- for example, in France, the storming of the Bastille. Here in Britain we celebrate the banks being shut. Thrilling!

I was thinking this had to be a 20th century thing, but I've just consulted Wikipedia and find that something like the modern pattern was established in 1834 and got firmed up into law in 1871. The guy who framed the Bank Holidays Act- Sir John Lubbock-  was a cricket nut and made sure the traditional dates of important matches in his corner of rural England got Bank Holiday status.

I was going to leave it at that but you know what Wikipedia's like. Lubbock's name was blue and clickable- so I clicked and what do you know? The man was a star.  He wrote the 19th century's most influential book on archaeology, coined the terms palaeolithic and neolithic, was a friend of Charles Darwin's, an advocate of proportional representation and the founder of The Electoral Reform Society. When he was elevated to the peerage in 1900 he took the title Lord Avebury after the village that contains southern England's most remarkable prehistoric monument. 

Please be upstanding. I give you...



Sir John Lubbock aka Lord Avebury (1834-1913)

Another Very Short Story

RAJAH

 

Bump bump bump. O this driver. You’d think we were sacks of coal not bags of bones. Used to be a fishmonger’s on the corner. Lovely fresh fish from Fleetwood every morning. And now it’s all the way across town in the Ring and Ride. Bump, bump bump over the sleeping policemen but anything for Rajah. Scorchy came first. After they bombed Alma Rd. He turned up next morning. His people dead we guessed and his fur all singed. Sue nursed him. Then Dick came home and it was embarrassing. Like he was the rent man. Sue hid behind my skirt. And what did he say? He said I smell cat. After four years away fighting the Japs. Can’t call them that now, can we? Japanese. I smell cat. What a greeting. But he came to love them. Cats I mean not Japs.  Flower-Power was all his. Used to spit at me and Sue but she’d curl up on Dick’s lap while he read the Evening News. Oh so heavy on the brakes. He’ll have us through the windscreen next. And then when Dick passed away there were the kittens we found in the hedge on the way to put flowers on his grave. People are so cruel. Sue said it was a sign. Puddled that girl. She named them for the boys in a band.  Duran Duran that’s the one.  We kept Le Bon. Well we had to. And then there was George Bush.  After the President. The first one. Not the silly one they have now. He was a hunter. Sue hated having to bury the little bodies. But that’s cat nature I said. You can’t change them.  Yes, George Bush was a proper cat. And now there’s Rajah. Silly old white hearth rug. Laziest cat in the universe. Never caught anything. But loves his fish. All the way to Asda for a nice piece of haddock for Rajah. Bang wallop at the lights and here’s the car park. He’ll outlive me but Sue will take him in. I’ll put it in my will. Don’t forget to comb out his tangles or I’ll haunt you.