feeling listless

That Day Another 11th of the month, another two minutes of silence. If that sounds flippant, it's because I'm slight annoyed with the flipancy this seems to be treated with recently. The point of those two minutes is to remember those who died in war.

But my experience over the past couple of years at various times has been that people stop because they feel as though they have to, like some national peer pressure is being brought to bare. They know what it's for but they don't actually think about it.

There tends to be a lot of people standing or sitting around in shops or offices looking at each other as though they're being stopped from doing what they actually want to be doing, such as talking, drinking tea or texting on their mobile phones. It's sometimes not their fault -- their job might mitigate that they're unable to be silent at the recognised time and they'll honour the dead in their own way at another time.

Which is why I'm wondering tonight if 11/11 could be a national holiday. I'd gladly trade one of the August Bank Holidays so that everything shuts down for a day -- a poignant counterpoint to Christmas but with similar conditions. A British thanksgiving if you will. Then those two minutes could mean something instead of being a moments stutter in an otherwise normal day.