Bang! it's 11am in Tonbridge....

I swear that I nearly jumped out of my skin today when a huge bang went off over Tonbridge Castle. It's okay it wasn't the Saxons coming to take back the fort after nearly 1,000 years in Norman hands! It was an air bomb going off at precisely 11am, to mark the beginning of the two minutes silence for the fallen of the Wars of the 20th and 21st centuries. My window cleaner who was out in the street at the time said that he had been equally shocked, especially since he had no idea what it was. He said that he was only too glad that he wasn't up his ladder when it went off. Two minutes of near silence later, apart from the brief conversation with the window cleaner, the passing cars, the people walking, the noise from the offices the radio playing in the background etc, and another massive bang went off. I watched the smoke in the air a hundred feet above the castle. "Was that strictly necessary?" a passer by remarked. Probably not but not bad to remind ourselves, even if only in that token way, how those poor young men in the trenches of Northern France suffered nearly a hundred years ago. Or would it be better to forget the whole sorry business?...