CHILDREN, animals, and elderly military veterans - there is an
impish quality to those who have faced the trauma of war, which
makes them among the most delightfully unruly of interviewees.
Radio 5 Live's coverage of the VE Day Service of
Thanksgiving (Sunday) featured several; and, as Chris
Warburton discovered, there is little control that can be exercised
over the mischievous or the verbose once a question has been
asked.
The star of the show was Geoff Harwood, whose tales of campaigns
in North Africa and Europe made for the best radio of the week. But
poor Warburton, presumably on a tight schedule, must have got
distracted. "Am I boring you?" Mr Harwood asked, with the
assertiveness of a teacher upbraiding a naughty child. Master
Warburton had the good sense to let Mr Harwood's story run its
course.
A good thing he did, since the last section was the best bit.
Having served for nearly 4000 days in the army, at his final
decommissioning he received a letter from the army finance board,
declaring that he had been paid for one day too many, and would he
please refund the extra pay, amounting to 55 pence. The army has,
in this respect alone, yet to receive its due from Mr Harwood.
For those growing up in the post-war era, the relatively neat
European narrative of East-West division followed by détente is
becoming ever more confused. Take the story of Georgia, told in
Assignment (World Service, Thursday of last week). Since
the fall of the Soviet Union, Georgia has established itself as a
secular state, going so far as to place a ban, in 2005, on
religious symbols in schools. Yet, as reported by Natalia Antelava,
schools in Tbilisi are crammed full of icons.
The Orthodox Church in Georgia is in the ascendant: new churches
are springing up everywhere, and minority groups are starting to
feel uncomfortable. The movement is strongly Russophile, and brings
with it some ugly characteristics. In May 2013, a pro-gay-rights
demonstration was attacked by demonstrators, several of them
Orthodox priests. The scene, Antelava reports, was Pythonesque in
its absurdity, and yet also effective. There have been no more such
demonstrations since.
In The Glass Delusion (Radio 4, Friday), the
psychoanalyst Adam Phillips introduced us to a psychological
phenomenon that expresses something of the confusion of the modern
world. Patients suffering from the said delusion believe themselves
to be so fragile that they will break when touched, and so
transparent that people can see through them. Reports of the
delusion date back to the 17th century, when glass production
became a feature of the domestic environment.
That our delusions make use of the materials familiar to us was
one of the many fascinating insights of this programme; such that,
in the late 19th century, the unbalanced might imagine that they
were made of cement; and, since the Cold War, paranoia is directed
at surveillance technology. But the delusion also speaks to a more
fundamental concern about our vulnerability to the gaze of
outsiders. To God, all things are known; but otherwise we prefer to
keep the glass smoky.