100 day – Day 99

100 days – Day 99: An East Wind Coming

3 August 2014

At the end of the Sherlock Holmes’ story, “His Last Bow”, Holmes says to Dr. Watson , “There’s an east wind coming, Watson.”

To which Watson replies, “I think not, Holmes. It is very warm.”

And Holmes concludes with, “Good old Watson! You are the one fixed point in a changing age. There’s an east wind coming all the same, such a wind as never blew on England yet. It will be cold and bitter, Watson, and a good many of us may wither before its blast. But it’s God’s own wind none the less, and a cleaner, better, stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared.”

The story is set in 1914, on the eve of the First World War,the anniversary of its outbreak being tomorrow.

It was rightly named “The Great War” and we are still getting to grips with the scale of the devastation it caused in the next four years – and beyond.

“There’s an east wind coming.”   Increasingly, I feel that today, don’t you?