I have often
considered how people like to complain.
Generally I mean. About the weather; about long waiting times in
casualty departments; about rising prices; about youth. Sometimes it seems that folk just love to
complain. They have to have a good
moan. My sage father served for five
years in India during the Second World War. He hated moaners. He would say,
“Some people are happy being miserable”. He was a positive driving force in the
lives of everyone around him.
Dad loved to
grow things. He like me, loved wild birdsong. He loved the clear blue horizon
and always said that the air off North Pier was worth a pound a bucketful. Perhaps it was the time of uncertainty during
the war that instilled his joie de vivre.
I have never been to war but I travelled to South Africa in 2000 with my
children and saw poverty. I took them to
Egypt in 2002 and saw the effect of no public health service, passing a man in
the street who was covered from head to toe in his own excrement. I haven’t taken them into a war zone but I
was working in Boots 1600 in The Arndale Centre only months before it was
bombed by the IRA.
I can say,
especially during these weeks of pre-election furore, that I have lived a
secure, comfortable and peaceful life. I have no need to complain. I live
happily in a country that has always helped the poor, provided excellent health
care and the best possible national security.
Those are the continuing values that I will be aiming for when I draw my
cross on Thursday 7th May. I
hope that you will too.
Out of a Clear Blue Sky
They cover
their faces,
balaclava
their crime,
features
blurred
in streaks of
primary emulsion
to soothe the
burning of impending lime.
Fun from the
rear of the …
One
shrouded face SHOUTS …
Remote
detonation.
Run from
fear …
Uhuh uhuh
uhuh.
RUN FROM FEAR
Time
suspends,
turns
retrograde
as hands and
limbs dissemble,
scarred with
spattered shrapnel
blood leaking
onto hot blue tarmac,
fired in the
oven of a sun-soaked afternoon,
and dripping
into veins
through
pop-up Red Cross lines,
like glasses
of full-bodied wine.
Time is
stilled in frantic motion,
exploded in a
mid-week market square.
A bus was
passing by,
In the
windows,
people
reading,
children
chatting,
dreamers
staring at a wistful cloud,
out of a
clear blue sky.
Adele V.
Robinson
Thanks for
reading.