As Time Goes By

My daughter-in-law Dorothyanne, mother of my grandchildren, has posted comments on As Time Goes By on her blog. I can't resist adding my thoughts. This is the immensely popular BBC domestic comedy about Lionel Hardcastle and Jean Pargiter, two 20-ish lovers who met at the time of the Korean War, in 1950, were parted for 38 years when a letter went astray, met again by chance when Lionel, now late middle aged, took Jean's daughter to dinner. It ran for 8 years on the BBC, perhaps because Jean's part is played by the great actor Judi Dench, but I think more because of the appeal of the gentle, benign interaction of the principal characters and the excellent supporting cast.  Wendy and I loved it, own the DVDs of the entire series, and watched it repeatedly. Less than a week before she died, Wendy managed to laugh (and cry a little) at the episode in which Lionel and Jean finally marry. Some of the appeal of this domestic comedy of modern manners to Wendy and me is probably because Lionel and Jean were our age, in their early 20s at the time of the Korean War. We could identify with them very easily; Wendy thought she had some of Jean's values and mannerisms, and Lionel's curmudgeonly conduct closely resembles the way I think and behave. The Korean War is an almost forgotten conflict now, but it loomed very large in 1950-53. At one stage the North Koreans pushed the South Koreans and their UN allies into a tiny pocket of land on the south coast of the Korean peninsula. Then American, British, Australian and Indian reinforcements arrived, pushed the North Koreans back to the 38th Parallel, and after a period of stalemate, a truce was arranged. But no peace treaty was ever negotiated and a heavily armed standoff persists even now, 60 years later. For a while in the early 1950s, I seriously considered enlisting in the Australian forces and serving in Korea. If I had remained in Australia in 1951 instead of going to Britain, I would likely have been drafted when conscription was briefly reintroduced in Australia. It's another example of "What might have been" if my life had unfolded in a different way.

Perhaps I should add a chapter to my memoirs on "alternative history"and speculate on how some of those other ways my life evolved might have turned out.

This is my 300th post. I know or can guess the identity of about half of the people who read this blog (up to 40/day now) but as the number of readers rises and the range of the audience widens, more seem to be based in countries where, so far as I know, I have neither friends nor professional colleagues. Who are the Slovenian readers, for instance? I get some feedback from friends and colleagues in personal emails, and - rarely - comments from strangers. I'm intrigued: I wonder who all the other strangers are, and why they read my blog.