November 11th

I have written about Leicester's war memorial before - it's aligned so that the sun will rise through it on November 11th - something I've wanted to see for the last five years but which the weather has never allowed. Even, or perhaps particularly, when it's blowing a gale and lashing with rain the war memorial is a moving place to find yourself at sunrise on a November morning, this one sits in on the edge of a large park next to Leicester university with a view down across the city and at 7 am everything conspires to make you contemplate the sacrifice it represents and your own mortality.

Today was a perfect sunrise, cold and frosty with a clear sky - it really was very beautiful. There was one other girl there waiting for the same thing we were, and a few dog walkers who didn't stop to look. I'm not sure if I'm grateful that we had that moment almost to ourselves or sorry that it wasn't more widely shared. I did think it a shame that the BBC vans coming to set up for the coming parade had arrived 20 minutes to late to see what we did. 

Lyn at I Prefer Reading has posted a Wilfred Owen poem today - Futility - that is particularly apt to go with a sunrise, but there were other things that came to mind up there this morning whilst watching a couple of students stagger back home which were altogether more hopeful, and that's the power of the place - that it's both sombre and celebratory.

November 11th

Leicester’s war memorial is on the edge of a park just out of the town centre. It was designed By Lutyens who seems to have been the go to guy for war memorials and for 364 days of year it’s a fairly imposing archway sitting at the top of a slight rise with a nice–ish view over the city but on November 11th it has it’s moment. The moment is sunrise because our war memorial is solar aligned – sadly this doesn’t seem to be widely known (I’d hoped to find a picture to illustrate but can’t see any online and don’t have any myself because this is the third year in a row it’s rained). I’ve only managed to catch one sunrise but it was quite an experience and unless it’s actually blowing a gale and raining (today) it’s a good place to be at 7.22 am on a November morning.

At that time of day there’s hardly anyone around – a few dog walkers, people like me on their way to work and a few people on their way home – a good time for reflection and for wondering what it might have felt like at sunrise on November 11th 1918. How can a war end at 11am? How do you go on being at war for those last few hours knowing it’s for nothing very much anymore? Still there’s something hopeful about sunrise – new beginnings and all that, and it strikes me as such a fantastic touch to a memorial – a way of bringing stone to life and making it really demonstrate what all that sacrifice of life might have been for. It’s uplifting without being sentimental and I can heartily recommend it even if it does mean getting up ridicoulously early on cold dark mornings.