(no subject)
Mar. 19th, 2016 01:02 pmAm currently a jellyfish because of a voicemail from Uncle #1. i don't want to listen to it. I don't know WHY the frell I don't want to listen to it, but I am being extremely neurotic about it. Just listen to the damn voicemail. Don't let it ruin your beautiful sunny Saturday.
Over on Dreamwidth,![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
legionseagle paid a recent visit to Liverpool, and has a survey (primarily aimed at UK-based folks) about bombs, bomb scares, bombing campaigns etc and how they've affected people's daily lives. Nice, cheerful topic. But extremely interesting, especially in comments as people expand on their experiences. In some ways we've had it very easy in Canada. The FLQ Crisis of 1970 was really the last time there was a terrorism campaign, and even that affected primarily only one province. I wasn't born until 1976, so this is all theoretical to me.
I remember being in Paris in 1999 and there being heavily armed men in fatigues in the RER station for unexplained reasons. I was hanging out with two other au pairs on my day off, one from South Africa and one from Mexico, and when I asked, "Those aren't REAL machine guns those soldiers are carrying, right?" these girls looked at me like I was a crazy person. Because a soldier is obviously going to carry around a fake gun. In retrospect, they were probably submachine guns, not machine guns, but they were big and they looked extremely intimidating. I had seen guns in the movies and on TV, but in my real life, that was my first time encountering a gun that wasn't holstered. And I hadn't seen many of those. The occasional police officer with a side arm firmly in its holster, that was it. No big guns before Paris 1999. I was petrified once I figured out those were actual guns.
And I still haven't listened to the voicemail. Deep, calming breath.
Edited to add: Have listened to voicemail (which was quite uninformative) and called him back. He wanted to remind me that Uncle #2's seventieth birthday is coming up in early May. Uncle #2 takes his birthdays seriously. I was already aware of this and was already planning on champagne as a birthday present. Phew! It wasn't nearly as bad as I'd thought it would be.
Over on Dreamwidth,
legionseagle paid a recent visit to Liverpool, and has a survey (primarily aimed at UK-based folks) about bombs, bomb scares, bombing campaigns etc and how they've affected people's daily lives. Nice, cheerful topic. But extremely interesting, especially in comments as people expand on their experiences. In some ways we've had it very easy in Canada. The FLQ Crisis of 1970 was really the last time there was a terrorism campaign, and even that affected primarily only one province. I wasn't born until 1976, so this is all theoretical to me. I remember being in Paris in 1999 and there being heavily armed men in fatigues in the RER station for unexplained reasons. I was hanging out with two other au pairs on my day off, one from South Africa and one from Mexico, and when I asked, "Those aren't REAL machine guns those soldiers are carrying, right?" these girls looked at me like I was a crazy person. Because a soldier is obviously going to carry around a fake gun. In retrospect, they were probably submachine guns, not machine guns, but they were big and they looked extremely intimidating. I had seen guns in the movies and on TV, but in my real life, that was my first time encountering a gun that wasn't holstered. And I hadn't seen many of those. The occasional police officer with a side arm firmly in its holster, that was it. No big guns before Paris 1999. I was petrified once I figured out those were actual guns.
And I still haven't listened to the voicemail. Deep, calming breath.
Edited to add: Have listened to voicemail (which was quite uninformative) and called him back. He wanted to remind me that Uncle #2's seventieth birthday is coming up in early May. Uncle #2 takes his birthdays seriously. I was already aware of this and was already planning on champagne as a birthday present. Phew! It wasn't nearly as bad as I'd thought it would be.
