You mean Hastings isn't near Hadrians Wall?

'When was the First World War?' said mike
'ummmm' I thought long and hard, I was taught this the other day 'er...... was it 19.....18...no...er...'
Mike shook his head in dispair making groaning noises.
'Give me a minute....no it was 1914-1918'
'Well done! At least you know when the Second World war was...don't you?' He said to my ever widening eyes.
'oh no' I thought, 'He's going to ask me when it was and I have forgotten'
'Don't you?' he repeated
'Er, not as such' I said
Eventually I found out it was 1939-1945, not, as I previously thought, 1935-1949!
Somehow we then got onto the Japanese in the war

'There were Japanese in the war?'
'Yes ali, there were Japanese in the war, they officially entered the war when they dropped a huge bomb on the US Naval base'
'oh, what naval base?'
'Pearl Harbour' Mike said with his eyes half shut in anticipation of the next question.
'Pearl Harbour?'
'Yes, oh god, please tell me you've heard of Pearl Harbour?'
'Ummmmm, heard of yes, seen, no!'
'Well, the Americans had this base in Hawaii called Pearl Harbour, they have bases everywhere but this one was in the Pacific'
'Hawaii is in the pacific?'
'Yes, oh my god!'
'I always thought it was in the Atlantic, are you sure it's not in the Atlantic?'
'Yes, quite sure'
'Really, now that is interesting. So it's on the West Coast of America, not the East Coast?'
'Yes. In the middle of the Pacific'
'Ah.'
'And the Japanese bombed it'
'See I'd know all this if I'd watched the film' I said.
Mike closed his eyes.
'And when the war ended the Japanese were still fighting, infact we stopped them from fighting by dropping a big fuck off bomb on them, that officially ended the war.' Mike tried to explain
'A big bomb?'
'Yes, a big, big bomb. An atom bomb! Hiroshima, Nagasaki.....'
'Ah, now Hiroshima I have heard of, but not the other one'
'You are wonderfully ignorant aren't you?'