Windows on the World

Posted by Barbara on October 9, 2023 in Blog, film, History, Music, Ukraine, Ukraine | 2 comments

The war in Ukraine grinds on, and we watch in horror and no small degree of impotence… but there are always rays of hope and tales of determination. I learned this week of a programme set up in Poland which is working to replace windows that are broken during bombing in Ukraine. A key problem that affects buildings in Ukraine is that every missile or rocket attack on a building will probably also blow out the glass of its immediate neighbours. Apparently one of the all-too-familiar sounds of the war is the harsh tinkle of broken glass as it is swept up. In cities such as Kharkiv, many city-centre windows are boarded up – or crisscrossed with tape to lessen the danger of flying shards in the event of a blast.

This is where ingenuity and determination take over; there is a small-scale Kharkiv-based volunteer organisation: Unity and Strength. It is using windows supplied by one of the organisation’s partner projects: Windows for Ukraine – which was the basis of the prize-winning Polish pavilion at the London Biennale this year. The organisation gathers unwanted windows – such as those removed during renovation projects – and sends them to Ukraine to be recycled into damaged buildings or used in new-builds. The programme is run by BRDA Foundation in Poland.

Inevitably, the result is an eclectic mix of windows being fitted into damaged buildings, but they will probably mean the difference between life and death for many households seeking to rebuild their pulverized homes, and help provide warmth and shelter for many more.

Now from the practical to the cultural and beyond; I can’t hear the word ‘window’ without being mentally transported to the brilliant Hitchcock film Rear Window.  It thrills and surprises right to the end; good old Hitchcock, he never lets you down.  Note to self: make sure to rewatch it one dark winter evening.

Staying loosely on topic, windows are highly useful places for covert entrances and exits – just the sort of thing one doesn’t want to be thinking about on a dark winter evening.  I learned of one famous such entry: apparently in 1936, prime minister Stanley Baldwin crept into Buckingham Palace through a back window, to talk with King Eward VIII about his forthcoming abdication.  This ‘fact’ is not on his Wikipedia page, so if any historians out there can provide some supporting evidence of this, please let me know.

Another window entry was immortalised in music; The Beatles’ She came in through the bathroom window is a brilliant rocker of a song, fantastic instrumentation and rhythm, but needs an explanation of who the eponymous ‘She’ was. It refers to some fans who took a ladder from Paul McCartney’s garden, climbed into his house in Cavendish Avenue, London, and stole a picture, possibly of his father.  The fans were nicknamed ‘The Apple Scruffs’ – after the record label – and were determined to have whatever they could get from the ‘Fab Four’. One Diane Ashley claims to have been one of those fans and who are we to deny this? After all, there is nothing like independent corroboration of facts in this post-truth age.