Remembrance Sunday

Back home two days now and all well here in a not too cold Edinburgh. Still the same old Edinburgh and my hills are still there every morning, not that I expected otherwise. They are faithful old hills, The Pentlands, always there to keep an eye on things for me. Think I shall ask my friend Neville to walk along the ridge with me some day soon. He's a mountaineer who has climbed in The Andes so I'm sure he would love to do the Pentlands again. What do you reckon Neville? Are you still reading my blog? See you Tuesday night anyway.

Tomorrow is Remembrance Sunday, 11th of November. We shall have 2 minutes silence at 11 am. I will be thinking about my uncle Alex John Maciver, my father's brother, who was killed in action on 31st October 1940 in the North Sea. He was aged just 20 years. I will post a blog about his death later this year. I'm waiting for more information from National Archives. Not that they have a huge amount.

I will also be thinking about my father, who survived the war, but had some terrible experiences, as well as losing his young brother. He was 22 when he lost his brother. He rarely mentioned the war or his brother's death. I often wonder how much these things affected him in later life. I didn't take the time to ask him when he was alive, and now regret it. I should have been more inquisitive, but it was never easy to ask him about what happened to him and his brother. Maybe it accounts for lots of things in his life that were a puzzle.

So tomorrow is for both of them, and all the other men from Isle of Lewis who were lost, and not forgetting my late aunt's service in North Africa and elsewhere throughout the war.