Swinging the lantern

Occasionally we read or hear something that pulls us up short and makes us examine our priorities, bringing life, and how horribly fragile it can be, into crystal clear focus!

Why one piece of information or story really 'gets' us as opposed to another I don't know, lets face it, we aren't short of stories of personal tragedy or world crisis, we see death, destruction and disaster in such copious quantities in the media it may even begin to have the opposite effect on us as our minds become desensitised in their effort to cope with such a dismal overload.

So perhaps one item connects in our minds because of simpler things, the way we hear of it, the way it is written or spoken or perhaps because as in the piece of writing I am about to direct you to, because it's written by someone real, someone we know, a normal individual who lives a normal life just like the rest of us but who contrary to most of us has faced situations in the course of that life that the most of us just can't imagine.

Balderdash and piffle, a blog I only recently began reading, carried one such piece of writing yesterday, the post is long but it is one of those you will find yourself glued to. Alex, it's author serves in the RAF and was directly underneath the very first launch of a Patriot missile when it shot down an Iraqi Scud in 1990, during the Gulf war. THIS post is his account of that experience and I promise you, it will make your blood run cold and you will thank your lucky stars, that no matter the politics of a conflict, that whilst the pundits and politicians sit in the comfort of their offices 'considering and criticising', we have service personnel with the fortitude to manage situations most of us wouldn't even care to imagine!