The task is done; the peace is signed,
Fearful tensions now unwind,
Peace in our time! the foolish cry,
The wise will keep their powder dry.
— Bob Harrison, Ashford, Kent, 27 Feb. 98, on BBC Ceefax.
It’s a new financial year, which means a new set of accounts here in the UK where I currently am staying. I threw out a bunch of papers from 2008, and then went through my filing cabinet throwing out a bunch of old bills.
But attached to one of them was a stray postit note. On it were the lines above. I thought them worthy of record back then; I think them worthy of it now.
I don’t recall the crisis that must have provoked that dry comment. The BBC’s teletext service, Ceefax, only just exists now, and its letters page is a memory, gone with the analogue TV service.
We forget, perhaps, that the majority of human thought and communication passes away, unrecorded. Not all of it deserves to.
There is only One that is forever. All the rest comes and goes.
Too true.