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On the 17th February 2020 Wendy and I set sail on Queen Elizabeth on a two week cruise up to Papua New Guinea, returning to Sydney on 2nd March.
It's the summer of 2010; the warm nights are heavy with the scent of star jasmine; sleeping bodies glisten with perspiration; draped, as modestly requires, under a thin white sheet. A light breeze provides intermittent comfort as it wafts fitfully through the open front door.
Yet we lie unperturbed. To enter the premises a nocturnal visitor bent on larceny, or perhaps an opportunistic dalliance, must wend their way past our parked cars and evade a motion detecting flood-light on the veranda before confronting locked, barred doors securing the front and rear entrances to the house.
Yet things are going missing. Not watches or wallets; laptops or phones; but clothes: "Did you put both my socks in the wash?" "Where's my black and white striped shirt?" "I seem to be missing several pairs of underpants!"
Bertrand Russell (Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970)) has been a major influence on my life. I asked for and was given a copy of his collected Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell for my 21st birthday and although I never agreed entirely with every one of his opinions I have always respected them.
In 1950 Russell won the Nobel Prize in literature but remained a controversial figure. He was responsible for the Russell–Einstein Manifesto in 1955. The signatories included Albert Einstein, just before his death, and ten other eminent intellectuals and scientists. They warned of the dangers of nuclear weapons and called on governments to find alternative ways of resolving conflict. Russell went on to become the first president of the campaign for nuclear disarmament (CND) and subsequently organised opposition to the Vietnam War. He could be seen in 50's news-reels at the head of CND demonstrations with his long divorced second wife Dora, for which he was jailed again at the age of 89.
In 1958 Gerald Holtom, created a logo for the movement by stylising, superimposing and circling the semaphore letters ND.
Some four years earlier I'd gained my semaphore badge in the Cubs, so like many children of my vintage, I already knew that: = N(uclear) = D(isarmament)
The logo soon became ubiquitous, graphitied onto walls and pavements, and widely used as a peace symbol in the 60s and 70s, particularly in hippie communes and crudely painted on VW camper-vans.
(otherwise known as the phallic Mercedes).