Summertime Blues

I can tell that it is now the height of summer, endless tennis on the TV, hosepipe bans across the nation and its too hot to do anything but sit around saying "Phew what a scorcher" and reach for another bottle of cold cider (really healthy alcohol - made from fruit so it's got to be full of natural goodness).
Now what is irritating me enormously at the moment is the coverage of the anniversary of the first day of the Battle of the Somme. Picture the scene - in the pre dawn light scared young men in a trench waiting for the command "Okay lads, over the top we go!" to find themselves in a world of confusion and fear, sacrificing their lives for the same old lies -Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. Now fast forward nearly a century and you get their memory being trodden all over by the media and tourists who don't even have the decency to show respect to the dead whilst they ramble aimlessly though the graveyards and memorials that litter that corner of a Flanders field that is forever England. I don't want the endless speculation of some news reporter about how it might have felt to be part of the first wave of the attack, I just want someone to prove to me that the sickening waste of life was worthwhile, that the society we live in now was worth the lives of an entire generation,because I just can't believe it