1964 …
Hey! That's me! Down there on the left. Little brother Phil on the right. And doesn't Mum look way cool in her hornrims and home-made coat? Dig our cute shoes and cheesy identical costumes.
And those strange little labels … What's that about?
Well, kids; here's some history: this is what happens in a nuclear war. Really! Her Majesty's Government has decreed that we are to take part in a nuclear war evacuation exercise! Woohoo!It's early morning. Several streets of our sleepy little town are abuzz with unusual activity. Mums are laying out the sunday best. Dads are dusting off the Box Brownies. Hyperactive kids are flying round the house, making airplane noises and bumping into things. Our mum is making sure we all look our best, because the TELEVISION PEOPLE will be there! Note the rag she carries (in Phil's hand) for emergency spit-washes.
By mid-morning we are all out on the pavement, the mums checking out one another's clothes. Everyone is decked out in their finery, ready to get nuked. The whole street! This is so weird.
Nobody talks above a whisper. We might miss the siren. Tension mounts as the clock ticks toward the hour …
There it is! The unearthly rising tone wailing out from the church tower, telling us we have FOUR MINUTES until the bombs hit us. Four minutes …
The same siren sounds every sunday morning, telling grown-ups everywhere to send the kids out to play while they furtively fumble for four minutes; the added thrill of pretending it's the real thing. But this day is different … This day the bombs are coming … We might even be on television!
As the siren wails on, wardens tell us to walk slowly to the top of the street, keeping in order like it's a school trip. Then we file along the main road to the coach station where we spend around twenty minutes being loaded up, street by street, into lovely old fifties charabancs, gleaming with strips of chrome. They judder into life and we're off, excitedly staring out of the windows at the spooky streets of our partially depopulated town, wondering the same thing we wonder every day: if we will actually get to see a mushroom cloud or if it will all be over in an instant, just a big flash like lightning …
And where do the government plan to send us when the bombs rain down?
We are headed, rather curiously, to Reydon School, a forty minute drive away.
From the coach windows, we can see across Sole Bay to the Sizewell Nuclear Reactor. There are American airbases dotted around the region. Some dads point out that at least it will be quick, being evacuated into a target area.
Too young to understand that this is the way our government intends to protect us during the imminent nuclear armageddon, we troop into the assembly hall and tuck in to lukewarm banana custard, served by school dinnerladies with lots of make-up and new hair-dos. The banana custard will obviously have some miraculous anti-radiation effect. The school dinnerladies, like the coach drivers, will no doubt be there at work during the apocalypse … After our curious meal, anticlimactically, we file back onto the coaches for the long drive home.
We do get on the telly that night. Crowded round the little wooden cabinet, doors open to reveal the flickering, almost spherical nine-inch screen … Look! There's mum shoving us back on the coach. Not her most dignified moment, but at least it was us and not somebody from the next street …
Back in the real world, that morning, our four minutes are up before we even reach the top of the road.
KERBLOOEY! The big light comes on, then all the lights go out, including yours and mine.
This is living every day with the very real terror of MAD. Mutually Assured Destruction (it's okay that all our people get killed, because all of theirs will be dead, too) …
I kinda miss the old Cold War. That Dr. Strangelove frisson … Hearing the rumble of the Soviet Bears, their long bodies full of bombs, flying down our coast every day, shadowed by our fighter planes. The thrill of wondering if you actually need to do your homework when you could well be dead by morning …
And now here's today's homework. The Bears don't fly any more so you have to do it.
Today's phrase you must use in your next telephone conversation: Mutually Assured Destruction.
Today's track to track down: New Frontier by Donald Fagen, who obviously misses the romance of the Cold War as much as I do.
Today's reading assignment: When The Wind Blows by Raymond Briggs. Send a copy to George Bush; it's a comic strip so he might be able to understand some of it. Get a kid to read him the longer words.
Today's fact: Uranuim is actually a vegetable.
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