Reaching across generations

This week has brought with it three events that have dragged my brain into the past, allowing me to muse on history and life (my abiding pleasure).

-- The 40th anniversary of Apollo 11 taking off for the moon. I was a teenager in England. My father and I dragged mattresses into the the "television room" and sat up all night watching Armstrong and Aldrin walk on the surface and forget about poor old Collins circling around above. It was a great family moment. The evening involved TV telling us how astronauts peed and pooed. The BBC was splendid.

It dawned on me this week that we watched the event on a black and white television with rabbit ears. Looking around at current technology around me only made me realise what a feat it was. There were no VCRs or touch tone phones, let alone DVDs, laptops or iPhones. How did they do it?

-- The death of Walter Cronkite. He meant more to my American friends than to me. But his passing away brought back memories of Watergate, the Vietnam War and the demise of Richard Nixon, all of which he presided over as a God of Journalism.

I am not entirely sure that the America that emerged from those years of turmoil is headed in any more of a right direction than it was at the time. But I do know that instead of a Cronkite telling it like it is, poor Americans are now plagued with biased, misleading and self-serving news reporters. It would have been great to really know what Walter thought of the evil crazies on Fox and the trash talk shows that surrounded his final years and pollute the minds of a nation that deserves and needs better.

-- The passing of Henry Allingham, aged 113. It surprised me how sad I felt when I heard that the "twice teenager" had gone. I guess it was because I liked the idea of someone going on and on participating in a war that so few remember.

The death of Mr Allingham (at his age, the "Mr" is obligatory) reminded me of once meeting a Boer War veteran. He was a Chelsea Pensioner and I was about eight. I have always liked the idea of reaching across generations by chance meetings. The same idea goes, for example, with shaking the hands of someone who once shook hands with Churchill etc.

Soggy with nostalgia, this week. Silly, really. But then life is, isn't it.