Vox Meditantis

13th October 1982

I’m still buzzing, absolutely flying. My hands are shaking as I write this but I don’t want to lose it, don’t want tonight to slip away like smoke through my fingers.

The Red Lion was heaving when I arrived – all noise and bodies and the glow of the coal fire in the corner, flames licking up the chimney like they were hungry for something beyond the bricks. I stood in the doorway for a moment, the outsider looking in as always, wondering if I’d made a mistake coming at all. But then someone called my name and pulled me into the warmth, and suddenly I wasn’t alone anymore.

We crowded round that fire, pints in hand, and for once I wasn’t the weird one, the odd one out. They were talking about the Greenham Common women, about the cruise missiles, about whether we’re all going to end up as nuclear ash before we’re thirty. Heavy stuff, but there was this energy in the air, this sense that we mattered, that what we think and do and are might actually leave a mark on the world.

Someone lit cigarettes from the fire, passing the flame from person to person, and I watched our faces illuminated in turn – ordinary faces made extraordinary in that flickering light. That’s when it hit me, this overwhelming feeling: we’ll be remembered. Not just the famous ones, not just Thatcher and Reagan playing their games of brinkmanship, but us. This moment. These conversations. The way we’re trying to forge something new from the ashes of what our parents built.

What principles define how you live? Sarah asked me later, after a few more drinks had loosened everyone’s tongues. She was serious, leaning forward with that intense look she gets, cigarette burning down between her fingers.

I had to think about it. Truth, I said. Not hiding who I am even when it’s easier to pretend. Solidarity – standing with people even when the government and the tabloids tell us we’re troublemakers and layabouts. And memory. Bearing witness. Making sure the things that happen to people like us don’t just disappear.

She nodded, said that’s why she keeps coming back too. Why we all do. Because in that pub, round that fire, we’re writing our own history. We’re the ones who’ll remember this time properly – not the sanitised version they’ll put in the schoolbooks, but the real, messy, terrifying, brilliant truth of it.

The coal shifted in the grate, sending up a shower of sparks, and someone started singing “Ghost Town” even though it’s ancient by now, over a year old. But we all joined in anyway because it still feels true, still captures something about these times we’re living through.

I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. More dole queues, more bombs, more headlines about things falling apart. But tonight – tonight I felt alive. Part of something bigger than myself. And if that’s all we get, if the world does end in fire like they keep saying it might, at least we’ll have had this. At least someone will remember we were here, that we cared, that we tried to be better than what they expected of us.

The fire’s still burning in my mind. I can still feel its heat on my face.

Late Cold War Britain, marked by the 1982 Falklands War and domestic economic strain, frames the diary’s world of pub debates, protest culture, and nuclear anxiety. In spring–summer 1982, the UK fought Argentina over the Falkland Islands, a short but decisive conflict that boosted Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s authority amid recession and high unemployment. Grassroots activism flourished, notably the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp opposing cruise missiles, reflecting broader fears of nuclear escalation. Urban decline and industrial contraction shaped everyday life, while music like ska and new wave voiced social unease. After 1982, nuclear tensions peaked before mid‑1980s arms control, Thatcher won re‑election in 1983, and deindustrialisation and labour realignment reshaped British society.

Bob Lynn | © 2025 Vox Meditantis. All rights reserved. | 🌐 Translate