Alan Coleman

I love Christmas, always have done. I can remember vividly getting worked up into a frenzy as Christmas came closer, school finished and family started to congregate in houses far too small for the purpose.

Looking back, it was all about the build up as the day itself was always, for some reason or another, a bit of an anti climax. The waiting,  the familiar smells and tastes, The Poseidon Adventure on our portable black and white TV, the old man disappearing up the pub and Mum struggling to cook all that food for all those people. Happy days.

As I got older and started going out and drinking myself, the focus seemed to turn towards Christmas Eve as the pinnacle of the season’s excitement. Finishing work, a few days off, beering it up in decorated boozers and round people’s houses. The continuous soundtrack of Slade and The Ronnettes blaring from juke boxes and Halfords aftermarket car stereos. More Happy days.

One particular Christmas Eve I came home shitfaced and vomited on the sofa, couldn’t be bothered to clear it up so just turned the cushion over hoping nobody would notice. It was my Grandma who came back from church the next morning and bubbled me to the old man. Very fucking Christian Grandma, cheers.

By that point Christmas Day had become one big blur, the whole thing mired by an unearthly hangover and paranoia about the previous nights activities.  Being uncontrollably drunk in front of the family, warm cans of lager, steamed up windows, shitty moods and dried up Turkey. The reality of Christmas.

Tomorrow will be Christmas Eve and as usual I can’t wait. In a couple of weeks I’ll have forgotten the tears, hangovers and the shit presents and will be wishing it was Christmas all over again.

Happy Days indeed.

I remember watching the Space Shuttle launch shortly before my tenth birthday, at a small school in the Essex countryside. The sun was shining outside as  we gazed in amazement at the school television, it had buttons on the front and 3 channels. It was soon after we had a visit from an American basketball team from Weathersfield Airbase, the biggest people we’d ever seen.

The launch we watched on that wooden Televsion on the 12th April 1981 was Columbia’s first mission, STS 1. It was a memory I relived yesterday as I watched Endeavour launch its last mission, STS 134, from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida 30 years later.

What struck me about yesterdays launch was how similar it was to the first one I saw, why would it be any different? The thing is, it’s not as if I’ve been that interested in the program during the last 30 years, it’s pretty much passed me by. It’s a bit like getting into a band shortly before they split up.

Yesterdays launch was as exiting as the first time I watched it, awesome. Great watching online too, complete with Specky banter and realtime launch info. Wicked.

A day before the space shuttle launch in 1982 Mr Atkins, our primary school teacher at the time, asked us to find out something about the men who pioneered space travel. Easy I thought to myself, just look up Neil Armstrong, that’s all we knew about space, Neil Armstrong.

At home, we had half a set of encyclopedias that had been inherited from my Grandma. It was a gamble as to whether or not you’d find what you where looking for depending on what books from the collection still existed.

Book A was missing which meant Armstrong was out of the question. After asking mum (Always quite taken with anything Russian) about  spacemen, I looked up Gagarin’s name and was rewarded (by chance) with three paragraphs about his first trip into space, an orbit of the earth in Vostok 1, taking 1hour 48 minutes.

The accompanying photo was what got me most, grey, shiny and unmistakably Russian. Amazingly it’s the one currently used in Gagarin’s entry on wikipedia. Quite how I recognised it instantly after 30 odd years when I can’t seem to remember where I currently live, is beyond me. Relaxed, happy, almost laughing. His confidence and huge beaming smile seemed to belay everything that everyone was saying about the Soviet Union at the time. Look at the picture and judge for yourself, he was a great guy then and if he was here today he’d still be a top bloke.

During the Vostok Program, colleagues were asked to vote for the member of the program to fly first, 17 out of 20 voted for Gagarin, incredible.

The following is how a Soviet Air Force Doctor evaluated Gagarin’s personality in 1960, 8 months before his mission into space:

Modest; embarrasses when his humor gets a little too racy; high degree of intellectual development evident in Yuriy; fantastic memory; distinguishes himself from his colleagues by his sharp and far-ranging sense of attention to his surroundings; a well-developed imagination; quick reactions; persevering, prepares himself painstakingly for his activities and training exercises, handles celestial mechanics and mathematical formulae with ease as well as excels in higher mathematics; does not feel constrained when he has to defend his point of view if he considers himself right; appears that he understands life better than a lot of his friends.

In that sense Yuri Gagarin was a childhood hero of mine. All everybody else at school wanted to talk about was Neil Armstrong and how he walked on the moon, a magnificent achievement in its own right, but for me I was always more intrigued by Gagarin’s ground breaking solo voyage into space and around the earth. When I was younger the Soviet space program portrayed in the media in the west always looked a little bit  home made, like the whole thing was being put together by a bunch of enthusiasts, which I suppose it was. I was drawn to the spirit of the people who built and developed technology under the Soviet regime.

It’s a shame that Yuri’s life would be cut short at the age of 34, apparently amid suspicious circumstances. Ironically, the very same society he championed through his achievements would eventually bring about his downfall.

Yuri Gagarin, Hero of the Soviet Union and space legend.

This is a fantastic picture, and one of my favourite images of the last few years. Even if you’ve been living in Mongolia since the turn of the century and don’t recognise them, they look like the sort of people you’d like know, right?

Look at Joe Calzaghe, with his humble stance and cool as thumbs up. When he answered his critics by teaching Jeff Lacy how to box in Mach 2006 I honestly thought that it was a defining point in my life. Still unbeaten after 45 fights, he is quite literally, a great bloke. Victoria Pendleton’s shy smile hides a personality that ignored her coach when he insisted that she was too small for track cycling. She went on to dominate her sport as the undisputed champion of the world with far too many titles and gold medals to list here. Lewis Hamilton’s friendly hands in pockets confidence is the epitome of cool. He ignored the racist slurs and backstabbing that accompany his chosen sport to rise as a true champion in unbelievable style.

I have no doubt whatever that any one of the above would stop and help you in the street if need be.

As a simple picture, it’s the embodiment of personal achievement, good nature and everything that is great about our country. Stuff The Daily Mail, the Royal family, the BNP and waving plastic flags at Last night of the proms. These people are what Great Britain is all about.

When I was younger I used to read small colorful comic books about war called, Commando. You can buy them concatenated as huge volumes in bigger bookshops. Gripping and predictable stories from all wars about fighting and destruction. I couldn’t get enough of it, the struggle between good and evil laid bare by Tommies with stubble pitted against skinny and monocled Jerry officers with leather gloves. Great stuff, honestly. Like with most things in life though I eventually grew out of it, I can’t remember when or why in particular but for some reason one day I was into reading Dick Francis.

I grew up, but as I look around me the real stories of our current wars still seem to take on the same Commando comic theme. Huge tabloid lettering laid onto pictures of ‘OUR BOYS’ in action. Enemy kill counts and detailed tales of bravery and valour, all complimented with big regimental cap badges and motto’s.

The very same simplicity that attracted me to stories of war in the first place is being used in the next generation to flog copy of tabloid rubbish to the masses. It’s an effective and fairly cynical tactic, although not new if one remembers the shameful coverage of the Falklands Conflict.

What bothers me most about this kind of sanitisation is the effect it’s had on how we’ve have come to view warfare. Not as a horrific and destructive waste of life and culture, but as a kind of triumphalist entertainment that leaves the reading itching for more excitement. Pictures of soldiers firing from the hip are great for paper sales, recruitment figures and flag waving, but behind the comic book stubble lies a terrifying pit of betrayal and damage for everyone involved.

We are simply kidding ourselves as adults in very much the same way that Commando Comic writers did as children. The idea that ‘OUR BOYS’ and ‘Harry the Homecoming Hero’ are somehow made of steel and will overcome evil with British grit and determination is ludicrous. Don’t get me wrong, I love the armed forces as much as the next bloke. But turning them into comic book heroes to hide the inconvenient reality of war will only exacerbate the disappointment of our eventual defeat. Worse still, it’ll make it easier for small religious men in suits to wage war with other peoples children.