Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from April, 2016

Chernobyl - 30 Years on

I was a teenager of the 1980s and just like many who look back with rose tinted glasses, it was amazing. There were the roller discos, Fame, leg warmers, Madonna, no mobile phones for your parents to keep tabs on you, but there was also some really bad stuff. I grew up in a house my parents built and the lounge had a floor to ceiling curtain, a fabulously midcentury pattern of a dark petrol blue. I clearly remember as a child that I thought of this as the Iron curtain. The mysterious Russian political scene that played out on the TV news in the corner, naturally filtered its way into my imaginary theatre and curtain up on performances. The terminology could so easily be translated in my mind to represent literal meaning. The cold war was obviously, a war where it's cold. The Iron Curtain, an actual curtain made of iron very similar to the one that shut out the chilly evenings in our house. But  teenagers struggle with the complexities of their hormones, individuality and gr