Triple Pete - A Modern Icarus

OK mein herr.

Remember Spike Milligan's black comedy film about life in England after a nuclear holocaust? Forgotten the name but it had the Goons, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore et al. (The first thing they did after the Bomb was to figure out who was next in line for the throne, mount her on a horse and sing the national anthem to her) The archetypal working class family were delighted to be able to add their kids' death certificates to all their immunisation certificates, school reports etc. 'So tidy like'. Life is a Pyrrhic victory - the victors write the history but noone wants to know. 'Twas always thus, but at least I have the consolation that my styrofoam cup of hoscof will far outlast me.

But leave the wise to wrangle, and with me,
the quarrel of the universe let be:

and, in some corner of the hubbub couched,

make game of that which makes as much of thee.

Curiously enough, the night before PPP died, we had taken him up Sugarloaf for a stump-burning barbie. Around midnight the valleys below filled with moonlight and the almost-full moon rose over launch, I quoted part of the Rubaiyat to Anna:

Ah, moon of my delight who knows't no wane,
the moon of heaven rises once again.

How oft, hereafter, rising, shall she look

through this same garden after us, in vain.

and Pete said, right, that's enough, you two.