The Anonymous Widower

Getting Emotional

I can sometimes get very emotional and start crying quietly. I did this morning in Carluccio’s in Islington. I’ve talked of this before.  All I was doing as reading the colour magazine in The Times and especially the piece about some of the people who had won medals at the 1948 Games after suffering badly in the war.

The star of those Games was the Dutch female athlete, Fanny Blankers-Koen, who won four gold medals.  The Dutch presented her with a new bicycle.

One other competitor I’d heard of was the Hungarian marksman,  Karoly Takacs, who after losing his right hand to a grenade accident, learned to shoot left handed and won gold. He also won gold four years later in Helsinki.

One amazing tale concerns Jim Halliday, who fought in the retreat from Dunkirk and later was captured by the Japanese in 1942. On release from the his POW camp, he weighed just  27 Kg. He then won silver or bronze, depending on the source,  in the wrestling. Sadly he died in 2007, so won’t be able to present any medals.  Perhaps, he has a son or daughter, who can be asked!

And people moan about, VAT on pies and pasties. They don’t know they’re alive.

To me though, the crying may also be about my eyes telling me that they have now wetted up and are not as bone dry as they have been in recent months. Two years ago, a nurse treated them and said they were the driest eyes she’d ever seen. She gave me some artificial tears, but I can’t put anything in my eyes.

It’s not as if this day is anything significant in my life, as my son died on the 23rd, not the 30th.

Perhaps, I’m just one of those people, who needs to cry!

March 31, 2012 - Posted by AnonW | Sport | Athletics, Olympics, Second World War, The Netherlands