Peace Work [antikvár]

HOMEIndeed, we won the war, but I lost five precious years. I was to mourn and still do, the physical break-up of my family; it was a sort of time-warp Belsen. As my ship left Naples harbour - it was the cool end of autumn - the year 1946; time, like the ship, was slipping away, an azure twilight glazed the Campania, lights enumerated along that seemingly timeless shore, now lifeless, Vesuvius was turning into a faded amber silhouette. I stood aft on the promenade deck, seamen still fussed around the ship's limits, other passengers leaned out at the rail. I watched the oncoming pollution, as they tossed their cigarette ends in the sea.Goodbye, here was I saying 'Goodbye to all that' though I was only twenty-eight, here I was saying goodbye, I hated goodbyes, they gave me the same haunting sadness every time. Wherever I had put down emotional roots, it was painful to bid it adieu; I am still haunted by all the homes I have had to leave. What was it like to live in a cottage in a village in the sixteenth century, and never say goodbye to it? Is the modern social pattern of unending change and movement the cause of two modern diseases, insecurity and dissatisfaction? How lucky Thomas Hood was to be able to write:I remember, I remember.The house where I was born.I don't even know what mine looked like! I stayed on deck, smoked a Capstan 'full strength', one of my last NAAFI-issue cigarettes. On the portside, we passed what were then isles of magic memory, Capri and Ischia, scarlet and bronze in the