You might be shocked, dear reader, but I actually opened my wallet today.
Oh yes.
I had to bust the padlock off, it was so rusted (plus I'd forgotten the code of the safe buried in the garden which held the keys).
The King on my paper money blinked at seeing daylight for the first time in decades.
The sheer volume of moths that burst out was like something off a vampire film.
If you heard a loud screech circa 11am (like rusted hinges and ancient leather being forced open), now you know what it was.
So I've painted the picture.
Talk of this single event ending the "credit crunch" and the recession are said to be unfounded.
So why, you may ask (being an astute sifter of news and current events with an eye on the plutocracy and monetary reform), was my wallet opened?
Well, the elders of the FC Sprogs (as opposed to those of the protocols of Zion) had twisted my arm, blackmailed me and applied pressure via 'she who must be obeyed' to force me to take them to the cinema.
So, reluctantly I found myself at a till opposite a spotty teenager (like a Simpson's character) who insisted on taking part of what was to be a family heirloom (my money) to get some tickets to get into what they now deem to term a "theatre."
Though theatre seems a grandiose term for a setting in which, for the most part, any kind of culture is about as present for as long as a £10 note on the pavement outside a synagogue.
Mind you, they call McDonalds "restaurants" so I suppose anything is possible...
But back to the cinema, we settled down in a row and readied ourselves (by getting out the vitals we'd brought from home (see, I'm not that rich, dumb or gullible to buy any of their brightly coloured offerings from the "foyer").
The film: Valkyrie, wherein a diminutive Church of Science Fiction Hollywood-luvvee plays an anti-Nazi German Staff Officer (I'm sure you've all read the reviews so I won't detain you for too long).
It's an enjoyable film and the sprogs certainly enjoyed it and we talked long and hard about it afterwards. There were bits that felt unreal (I think he mentioned closing the concentration camps in the first minute of the film) when most of those involved were probably German conservatives annoyed that the war was being lost. But hey - I don't know enough about the history of it to comment in-depth (I know! A blogger admitting ignorance: pinch yourself, it's happening daddio).
So why this long and meandering river of a preamble (leaving plenty of bizarre anecdotal ox-bow lakes in its wake!) you ask, demanding your reading time back like an irate father standing in the foyer wagging his finger at the price of hotdogs and popcorn?
Because all of us there from the FC-fold gasped in awe at the pool-bottom logo at the point when we meet the Major (or General, I can't recall) in charge of the reserve battalion responsible for taking/defending the government quarter of Berlin (a strangely bomb-crater free - for 1944 - area of Berlin) as his swims lengths. It was almost identical to the logo on the bottom of our paddling pool back at Codreanu Cottage!
So if and when you see this film (at the "theatre" or on DVD) look out for the swimming pool, and think of the sprogs and I jumping in and out of the paddling pool this coming Summer, much to horror/amusement [delete as applicable] of the neighbours.
Before I leave this most bizarre of posts to go and have a long lie down, all I will say about this film is this: as time goes by, more and more Germans during WW2 will be seen as 'normal' or 'patriots' or 'heroes' or 'cowards' or 'Christians' or maybe even just mums, dads, sons and daughters... i.e. they are and were just like us.
We can have our doubts, disagreements, differences or whatever with the German regime of 1933-45, but as the wartime hysteria and propaganda dissipates (helped by brave souls who stand up and denounce the 'gas chamber' myth) we will be left with a far more honest and open view of WW2, with the good and bad on all sides, 'warts n all.'
That can't be a bad thing.
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