Dismal Decos and the A Bomb

I saw a very sad sight on the way to work this morning, a prevously bumptious and bloated inflatable Santa had obviously developed a puncture, and was sagging, flaccid over someone's porch roof. I shall add it to my 'virtual' collection of dismal Christmas decorations (see 'Rusty Christmas).


I was chatting to someone recently over a work dinner about his career in the nuclear industry, and found myself reminiscing about how my father used to have framed photographs of Hinckley Point, Doom Ray (that's what my mother called it), and his favourite, the atom bomb's mushroom cloud with the sampler rockets vapour trails decorating the edges. I noticed the diner's face register surprise when I explained my mother had to take them off the walls and hide them when other Quakers came to tea.

My father was an unusual character, he always worried about 'marauding gangs' beseiging our house. To outwit them, he used to order those huge hampers of food from the back of mail order catalogues (John Moores) and put them in the breakfast room cupboard. My mother used to regularly run out of things (I well remember my father shouting from the toilet, 'Why oh why can't you buy a spare toilet roll?') and pinch a tin or two from the 'iron rations'. The stock depleted quite quickly, and all that was left was a meagre supply of 'squid in its own ink' and similar 'delicacies'. I used to have nightmares about having to sit in the dank air-raid shelter in the garden, eating only 'Squid in its own Ink' while the marauding gangs did whatever marauding gangs did on the surface. My father used to be quite smug about how the air raid shelter could also be used as a nuclear bunker. If you've seen it, you will realise why 'Blast from the Past' is one of my favourite films ever.