I should really go to bed...

[pyat]

I should go to bed, instead of lurking in the basement with bits and pieces of army surplus.



Melskunk: Gracious! *passes you your bully beef and god awful apricot jam*
Me: Bully Beef saved my life, during the Big Push at Loos! Stopped a Kraut bullet, it did! Though the shrapnel from the tin took out Cpl. Nobby.

Comments

[bodhifox.livejournal.com]

I have a WWII mask. But down here gas masks are sometimes considered to be drug paraphernalia. Have to be careful who sees it.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Well, why do you think I was hiding in the basement? :)

[hossblacksilver.livejournal.com]

Are. You. My. Mummmeeee?

[postrodent.livejournal.com]

AAAAH stop, that photo was creepy enough before you brought _Empty Child_ into it!

Serious times, Pyat, this somehow looks less like "historical" and more like "alternate reality horror" to my eyes. I think your gesture has something to do with it, combined with the affect-flattening of the gas mask.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

I saw this street as it'll be in five years' time, say, or three years' time (1941 they say it's booked for), after the fighting's started.

No, not all smashed to pieces. Only a little altered, kind of chipped and dirty-looking, the shop-windows almost empty and so dusty that you can't see into them. Down a side street there's an enormous bomb-crater and a block of buildings burnt out so that it looks like a hollow tooth. Thermite. It's all curiously quiet, and everyone's very thin. A platoon of soldiers comes marching up the street. They're all as thin as rakes and their boots are dragging. The sergeant's got corkscrew moustaches and holds himself like a ramrod, but he's thin too and he's got a cough that almost tears him open. Between his coughs he's trying to bawl at them in the old parade-ground style. 'Nah then, Jones! Lift yer 'ed up! What yer keep starin' at the ground for? All them fag- ends was picked up years ago.' Suddenly a fit of coughing catches him. He tries to stop it, can't, doubles up like a ruler, and almost coughs his guts out. His face turns pink and purple, his moustache goes limp, and the water runs out of his eyes.

I can hear the air-raid sirens blowing and the loud-speakers bellowing that our glorious troops have taken a hundred thousand prisoners.

I see a top-floor-back in Birmingham and a child of five howling and howling for a bit of bread. And suddenly the mother can't stand it any longer, and she yells at it, 'Shut your trap, you little bastard!' and then she ups the child's frock and smacks its bottom hard, because there isn't any bread and isn't going to be any bread. I see it all. I see the posters and the food-queues, and the castor oil and the rubber truncheons and the machine-guns squirting out of bedroom windows.

Is it going to happen? No knowing. Some days it's impossible to believe it. Some days I say to myself that it's just a scare got up by the newspapers. Some days I know in my bones there's no escaping it.

Though, given how well-fed I am, and the microphone in my hand, at least I'm the guy announcing the victory on the loudspeaker.

[postrodent.livejournal.com]

Very apt quote for that photo. You look like you're inhabiting a reality not distant from Bowling's imagination. And you're even in a basement -- doing your Iraqi Minister of Information number while the bombs fall outside. :)

[pyat.livejournal.com]

I was waiting for that one! :)

[hossblacksilver.livejournal.com]

Then I'm glad I didn't disappoint! n_n

[firesign10.livejournal.com]

That's a great picture!!

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[momentrabbit.livejournal.com]

Looks like a fraction of a moment before Pvt. Pyat burst into song! Something about the New Polymers. Or perhaps the joys of Trench Foot Care! n.n

[pyat.livejournal.com]

More likely a brief comic song about "Johnny Turkey", delivered in a loud nasal monotone.