Menoffagainorrhoea; Fields Repurposed P2

If you were able to read the last notice board image in yesterday's post, you will have realised that my title for these posts refers to the appropriation of farmland to build 'pop-up' airfields all over East Anglia during the war... and how those same fields were returned to agriculture afterwards.

During those war years, the skies reverberated with the sound of aeroplane engines - and sometimes with crashes. A great deal of the exhibit material at the Flixton museum was retrieved from remains. Quite often things are still dug up in fields, or offshore, dragged up in fishing nets.

The museum has a variety of buildings; two hangers in which are housed more large planes and parts thereof as well as the 'NAAFI' cafe (causing Aitch to smile, as she was in the catering corp); and several buildings housing specific focus, such as air/sea rescue, the 466th and Bomber Command...

Within these, the range of items was incredible. I'm not going to say too much more myself, today - let the pictures do the talking - but I will observe, as I lay this down, that to my mind this is a large part of what blogging is about; recording the things which may otherwise go unnoticed, biographical, historical, comical, spiritual... whatever the material, blogging is archival by nature and this is very important. Without such as this and places like this museum, what would be known of life a hundred, a thousand, years hence? Archaeologists of the future will have a better time of piecing things together from the 20th and later centuries than those who must deal with a past in which little was recorded in word or image (of a quality that can be deciphered accurately). No matter how small a blog, or a flight log or piece of clothing, it all adds to the fabric of our identity. That's the philosophical bit over. Look on...

This is what happens to aluminium when in a high-impact 
crash. Grotesquely beautiful...

There are professionally run museums and memorial places which cover such subjects. What captivated me about this place though (as is often so with volunteer-run exhibitions) is the degree of personal contact one feels with the history. Nothing clinical or intellectual here (not that it lacked such) - this was as much about the gut-feel and fond, often tragic, memory. The letter from Mrs Vickers above is a prime example. I was greatly moved by much of what I saw and read. I do hope I can return there and to other close-by air-field museums.

...we leave the museum (mostly) at this point, but the day of the 19th and repurposed fields is not yet over.

See you Sunday for more from Flixton... yes, Sunday.