Still Alive [by Pogo]
All this teary-eyed snuffling over Bonzo's recent exit-stage-right got me thinking about those heady days.
I can look back and laugh about it now.
When I was a spotty schoolkid back in the late 70s/early 80s I was convinced I'd be dead by the year 2000. Most of us were. It seemed that barely a week could go by without a mushroom cloud appearing on the telly or in the papers. They were everywhere. One of the icons of the era. By 1980 the Government was showing a series of films on the telly - Protect And Survive.
How we laughed. In horror. The very idea of unscrewing your doors and leaning them up against a wall to build yourself a makeshift fallout shelter seemed ludicrous. Painting your windows white would keep out the beta rays. Marvellous. But what about those gamma rays? The ones that slowly fry you from inside? All us schoolkids knew gamma rays could worm their way through several feet of concrete. Ghouls, we were.
Looking back at it, there was little the Government could do to reassure us. We lived 40-odd miles away from the Sellafield nuclear plant (a.k.a. "Windscales"). We all knew that the stuff they produced there was weapons grade - sure, as a by-product they were hooked into the National Grid and they provided electricity. But the plant was there to make weapons material. It'd be a direct target. We were probably doomed.
Ronald Regan became US President. We were definitely doomed. Within seconds he was over here, lecturing us about an "Evil Empire".
Luckily we had a bit of light relief from all this nuclear doom and gloom. A good old fashioned conventional war down in the South Atlantic. Stirring images of good old British Tommies yomping over mountains filled the screens. Daily reports from the first Embedded Reporter, Brian Hanrahan, crowed out of telly speakers. "I counted them all out, and I counted them all back again". Maggie told us to "Rejoice".
Then I went to college. By the time I'd sobered up the USSR had gone through a couple of new Chairmen in quick succession and suddenly we had this nice mild-mannered smiling bloke in charge, talking about "restructuring" and "openness". I liked him. Reagan started doing silly instead of scary things. He inspired The Ramones to write Bonzo Goes To Bitburg, so surely things were looking up. My fears evaporated.
So last night it was quite moving to see Mikhail Gorbachev paying his last respects. His face, paradoxically, reminds me of a time when the world was starting to look like a nice place.
What happened?
* * *
Pogo is continually told to shut up by his long-suffering mates down the pub. Always opinionated yet rarely correct, he can't help sticking his oar in no matter what the subject. He has even been known to offer up opinions on world leaders, about which he is supremely unqualified to speak.
I can look back and laugh about it now.
When I was a spotty schoolkid back in the late 70s/early 80s I was convinced I'd be dead by the year 2000. Most of us were. It seemed that barely a week could go by without a mushroom cloud appearing on the telly or in the papers. They were everywhere. One of the icons of the era. By 1980 the Government was showing a series of films on the telly - Protect And Survive.
How we laughed. In horror. The very idea of unscrewing your doors and leaning them up against a wall to build yourself a makeshift fallout shelter seemed ludicrous. Painting your windows white would keep out the beta rays. Marvellous. But what about those gamma rays? The ones that slowly fry you from inside? All us schoolkids knew gamma rays could worm their way through several feet of concrete. Ghouls, we were.
Looking back at it, there was little the Government could do to reassure us. We lived 40-odd miles away from the Sellafield nuclear plant (a.k.a. "Windscales"). We all knew that the stuff they produced there was weapons grade - sure, as a by-product they were hooked into the National Grid and they provided electricity. But the plant was there to make weapons material. It'd be a direct target. We were probably doomed.
Ronald Regan became US President. We were definitely doomed. Within seconds he was over here, lecturing us about an "Evil Empire".
Luckily we had a bit of light relief from all this nuclear doom and gloom. A good old fashioned conventional war down in the South Atlantic. Stirring images of good old British Tommies yomping over mountains filled the screens. Daily reports from the first Embedded Reporter, Brian Hanrahan, crowed out of telly speakers. "I counted them all out, and I counted them all back again". Maggie told us to "Rejoice".
Then I went to college. By the time I'd sobered up the USSR had gone through a couple of new Chairmen in quick succession and suddenly we had this nice mild-mannered smiling bloke in charge, talking about "restructuring" and "openness". I liked him. Reagan started doing silly instead of scary things. He inspired The Ramones to write Bonzo Goes To Bitburg, so surely things were looking up. My fears evaporated.
So last night it was quite moving to see Mikhail Gorbachev paying his last respects. His face, paradoxically, reminds me of a time when the world was starting to look like a nice place.
What happened?
Pogo is continually told to shut up by his long-suffering mates down the pub. Always opinionated yet rarely correct, he can't help sticking his oar in no matter what the subject. He has even been known to offer up opinions on world leaders, about which he is supremely unqualified to speak.
1 Comments:
It's strange, yet fascinating, to read about this particular part of history - I too young at the time to pay attention to any such tension, if it even existed in such extend in Finland.
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