In a straw poll of my friends' places of work
(schools, FE colleges and arts organisations, mainly), I found that
distressingly - at least to me - numbers of them did not observe the two-minute
silence on Armistice Day last Tuesday.
Although the schools, for the most part, marked the
occasion in some other way, usually during assembly, the unified experience of
the shared silence throughout the country (and throughout the Commonwealth
according to time zone) at the moment of the Armistice is very significant -
particularly in this anniversary year of the outbreak of WW1 - and is something
in which we should participate.
Stopping the daily routine of working, teaching,
learning and meeting for two minutes in an otherwise ordinary working day is a
visceral reminder that we are living the ‘tomorrow’ for which our armed forces
‘gave their today’; we should not corral remembrance into ceremony, but let it
find us where we are.
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