As well as being the day we commemorate the huge battle when every Spitfire and Hurricane in the RAF went into the air to fight the most enormous wave of bombers ever thrown at the UK, this is also my wedding anniversary...
so after a lovely day with lunch out and a lazy afternoon I watched the obligatory Spitfire pilot story in the evening - which left me strangely less moved than many similar drama/docs - but nevertheless had some great flying sequences.
Dad was not old enough to be in this stage of the war, but I often wonder what the schoolboy with certainty that this was what he wanted to do, thought or knew about this day in 1940. at 17 he was only a year or so away from being in it...
as the first anniversary of his death approaches I still feel mainly pride, and get completely wet eyed at Churchill's Battle of Britain speech and the like...
I can't get quite so emotional about his heroic role in the counselling of the clergy for some reason.