Wednesday witterings

So, tomorrow is the Big Day. The country will choose it’s fate for the next four years or so. Whilst I have some tingle in my thumbs reference a Tory victory I cannot think it will come off. There seems to be a great lassitude amongst the electorate. Some say this will benefit Howard but it is the sort of maths that I gave up bothering with a very long while ago. It may be true that the pool of electors is so satisfied with the general overall position that they cannot be bothered to become involved on any single issue. Whilst I presently intend to vote, the actual deed will depend on what I feel tomorrow morning. My vote will not make any difference either way and I no longer have those high principles that say I should just because I can.

I’ve been working on the photographs I took whilst on holiday. Funny thing is that there seem to be none that is significantly different or superior to any I already have. Reasonable I suppose – I still have the same camera, range of lenses and digital settings as last time we were in the West and my eye and sense of composition are now so old as to be atrophied. I may use the latest to do some training or experimentation in PhotoShop but I cannot see them going anywhere else. They are almost Islamic in their exclusion of any representation of the human form so no question of them being record photos – ‘That’s what I looked like in 2005’ sort of thing. The negatives and slides I have from late 50s onwards might repay a little bit of modern technology being used.

There has been a posting on a Northern Ireland 4M that I look at about the internal security incidents since 1969. Reading through these I see many in which I was involved as an investigator and the précis on the 4M drags me off down the memory trail. I am able to add post-scripts to some and that is nice – the work paid off. There are others where we knew who and what but were unable to reach out and lift those responsible. Overall, is the awareness of just how much a waste of effort it all was. The military solution was denied us and, in the end, it all came down to bargaining and negotiation with guys in suits sitting in Adam buildings with coffee in fine china cups. My regret is that the men and women who died to put those cups on the table really died in vain. The smarmy politicos could have sold the pass much earlier.