"Oh what fun we had" 1994

The attitude to abused children in this country, this idea of good and evil still presides over us all. I've done some dodgy things but I'm not evil. Nature has given each and every one of us defense mechanisms that the powers that be have been trying to eradicate and suppress until they want their young men to die for a just cause like protecting oil off of the Argentine coast for example. Then it's all whipped up into nationalism, and violent men become heroes. Be tough, take no prisoners, the word covert springs to mind. Ever since I have tried to understand my own violence I realized I was brought up on a secret script, one that said I was to be tough, show no pain. Emotions are useless to the cause of macho heroism and your countries need for you to protect it. None of this was directly communicated, it was all passed down in the fables and behavior of your peers and parents and history lessons, the things you saw on telly that showed what it means to be a man, James Bond, John Wayne. Rocky, Rambo. On the streets the hard men that feared nobody, the biggest, the most muscular, they were the ones you looked up to, why? Because somewhere at some time you were taught to be tough. If you were or not naturally that didn't matter, you all had to be tough. Where was our war? We grew up with British Legion Dads that did their two years National Service and then proceeded to ram down our throat's how good we had it, and National Service should be brought back, as they guided their beer guts to the nearest British Legion, a hive for good old British Nationalism and breeding ground for bigots and racists. My father was not called up for national service but my uncle was put in a mental asylum and had his head cracked open when he conscientiously objected... Granddad a fierce communist from the Jarrow march days threw the bible at the court judges when he refused to fight in the second world war, a brave man, some might say a coward, but being brave is about standing up against a belief system on your own when most people just follow like sheep regardless of how they really feel, mustn't upset the apple cart, I'll go to my death just so I don't look out of place.