A Turn of Events - Murder, mayhem and madness.

I wasn't going to write this week. Couldn't really separate one turn of events from another. I suppose that, now I that I am well into my third-term, (my mother is 97 this year and definitely reaching the end of her fourth), past events develop a blurriness at the edges. Dates and times become less well defined but some events stick clearly in your mind. They are indelibly imprinted on your memory, in clear photographic detail.

In the early 1980's I worked for several companies, including The House of Carmen, demonstrating their products in large department stores around the UK. I enjoyed the work and did very well, enjoying the company of regular store staff but also the change and challenge of each new location. My first assignment was pre-Christmas product promotion at Lewis's store in Liverpool.   One day the store was packed with shoppers when a bomb alert was sounded. I followed training procedures and took the escalator to the ground floor but on the way down, spotted a young boy around 9 or ten, taking the escalator up to the toy department.

Instinctively, I got to the bottom, went back up and collected him, then walked the outside of the building holding his hand until eventually we located his mother. I was 22 years old. The IRA had an on-going campaign of bombing on the UK mainland and when I think about the evacuation procedure that day, I realise that if a bomb had gone off, most of the people who left the building would have been killed. The modus operandi at the time was to stuff bombs into dustbins or cars.  An alert often triggered the evacuation and then the bomb was timed to explode as people crowded out.  Perhaps the boy and I might have survived.

Two weeks later, I began a four week stint at Boots 1600 store in The Arndale Centre, Manchester. In 1983 I worked for a week at the Conference Centre in Brighton. It was the same year that an attempt was made on the heart of Government during the Conservative Party Conference: A bomb in the Grand Hotel. The event sent shock waves through our Nation. Then in 1996 The Arndale Centre was virtually demolished by IRA bombs.  Cities and major conference centres are always the most desirable places for acts of terrorism.  It is easier to find a needle in a haystack than to spot someone different in a cosmopolitan environment. Although, my parents' village pub was also an IRA bomb plot target because of its proximity to an active army barracks.

Our own security forces, police and intelligence services have averted many bomb plots in recent years. They are constantly changing their procedures and tactics. Security at airports, railway stations  and stadium events, perhaps covert, has never been stronger. They are doing a great job, despite cuts in Police numbers. The turn of events that has changed the effectiveness of the current wave of terrorism, has been its simplicity. A high powered vehicle is stolen or hired by an assailant who drives at a crowd of people, armed with only a large knife and in ten minutes changes 'business as usual' into mayhem, murder and madness.

This type of act is almost impossible to prevent. So I ask, during troubled times, how can we protect ourselves? How can we protect our cities and events from random attacks? I am certain that we must not surrender our way of life to this extremist pressure. We live in a wonderful country, where we are free to express our dissent by peaceful protest, petition and in person to our MP. Those freedoms have been hard won over centuries. Those who challenge our freedoms, by acts of terrorism against our freely elected representatives, should be treated as traitors. There is a gate in our great city that once bore their severed heads.

Yesterday, many of the victims of the blind fury that drives such attacks, were young people, some children. Let's stop treating terrorists differently and assigning them kudos that they do not deserve. They are murderers, criminals and bad people. There is no 'just cause' that mows down innocent children. There is no 'just cause' that uses a moving vehicle as a battering ram with human flesh as a target. It is time to tell those who plan such acts that we do not acknowledge their terrorist status. We need to let them know that we do not recognise their 'cause'. If they disagree with our way of life, if they were born in our country, they need to be taught that they have a grievance platform. We all do. It is called democracy. It is our greatest asset, our treasure, it is who we are. And I for one am very proud of who we are.

The poem below is partly my own work but also a tribute to the power of written word. The original version was written by William Wordsworth, whilst standing on Westminster Bridge on 3rd September 1803. His poem expresses many feelings about the city, about that day but also about the nature of the country in which he was born. Apart from the wonderful view of London, Big Ben and The Palace of Westminster, 'Upon Westminster Bridge' may itself, be the reason that many tourists make a pilgrimage to that same spot. It is with great sadness, that I present my own 'mashed up' version today.

Upon Westminster Bridge

March 21, 2017 (with deference to William Wordsworth, Sept 3 1803)

Hell has not anything to show so foul,

Void would they be of soul who could pass by
A sight so tragic in its circumstance:
This city now doth like a garment wear.

The madness of this carnage: frantic, raw,

As innocents abroad, lie murdered, maimed.
Strewn broken bodies, looking to the sky 
All wrapped in blood-soaked sirens’ wail.

Never did dark shadows deftly seep,

Into our courtyards of democracy.
Ne’er saw I, never felt, a shock so deep!

The river flows against an unjust will.

The mother of all parliaments with never sleep
And all our mighty heart is beating still. 

Adele V Robinson

(In tribute to the bravery of PC Keith Palmer and the valour of MP Tobias Ellwood).

Thank you for reading.  Adele

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Pirates

I'm still reeling from the implications of the EU exit vote. It feels like we've walked the plank into infested waters! Funnily enough, I've been reading a book about "1956 - The Year That Changed Britain" (by Francis Beckett and Tony Russell). 1956 was a pivotal year though the book focuses mainly on the Suez Crisis and the foolhardy attempts of this country's political and military leaders to flex the muscles of empire one last time, attempts which ended in embarrassment and abject failure, but which sowed the seeds for much of the subsequent mistrust of the west by Egypt, Iran and Iraq.

An attitude that was beginning to sound anachronistic in the mid-fifties has become even more out of tune with a fast evolving world - but despite that, echoes of the "make Britain great again" refrain have been partly responsible for 17 million of my compatriots (and 67% of Blackpool voters) choosing to divorce themselves from the European Union this week. It may be democracy in action, but I am anticipating "2016 - The Year That Britain Shot Itself In Both Feet". I hope time proves me wrong. It really is no consolation at all that DC is handing over the tiller of the ship of state to BoJo (or worse?) to navigate us through the uncharted waters that lie ahead, but I'll leave it at that for political commentary... and concentrate instead on Pirates!

I've had some fun with anagrams of this week's theme: sea trip is a good one, as are parties and traipse, pastier, spat ire and spar tie along with the wonderfully evocative rat pies (plus its vegetarian alternative, tar pies). I wasn't so sure about tap rise, tip arse or it's rape although they could all have buccaneering connotations. I kept on looking to force out an anagram using art. Ipse art  was the closest I got - not quite embarrassment and abject failure as it did give me the idea for a poem (as you'll see below).

First, a bit of etymology and potted piratical history. The English word derives originally from the Greek πειρατής (peirates) via the Latin pirata and means a sea-brigand, literally one who attacks ships. No surprise there, though it helps date the origin of piracy to the 14th century BC, the earliest recorded exploits being those of the marauding Sea Peoples of the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean at the start of a tradition that has been upheld by Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Goths, Celts, Vikings and Moors (plus Cantonese and Japanese pirates in Eastern waters) - and all of this before the 'golden age' of piracy dawned with the European expansion to the Americas in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Brigantines, corsairs, galleons and sloops plied the sea lanes of the Caribbean. Gold and silver bound from South America for Spain was the target of privateering pirate crews from England, France and the Netherlands. Doubloons and pieces of eight, the spoils of piracy, were shared among the marauding crews in a remarkably equitable manner - for many pirate ships were akin to democratic co-operatives, bounded by strict codes of honour despite the nature of their 'trade'. Treasure chests, treasure islands, blackbeards, bluebeards, peg legs, parrots, walking the plank and getting marooned are all the stuff of pirate tales. Life was hard and violent, stakes were high and few pirates lived long enough to enjoy the fruits of their plunders for they were usually either undone by other scurvy pirate crews or they were hunted down by the imperial navies of Britain and France, both of whom were engaged in an attempt to clean up and police the sea lanes.

Jolly Roger Hilton once described artistic endeavour as "a man swinging out into the void." Here they go then, in a sort of extended, mutant and swashbuckling Clerihew, setting off through uncharted waters on their voyage of discovery...

Painters Away! (Ipse Art)
Rene Magritte captained the fleet,
Georges Seurat stood for first mate.
Their challenge - to see if they could create
two sea-worthy barques fit to chart
unfathomed waters
in pursuance of great modern art.

Abstraction, Impression, docked side by side,
were being made ready to sail.
Picasso and Sisley fettled the rigging,
their canvas was primed by Matisse,
while Toulouse Lautrec varnished the decks
and Dali and Dufy repainted the hulls
to splendidly surreal effect.

During this lull Paul Cezanne,
on hand for his culinary chops,
escaped from his galley to top up his tan,
while Gaugin the boatswain got comfortably pally
with swashbuckling Marc Chagall,
renowned for being rampant in the main,
and whose fondest refrain ran
"a dame in every port, a port in every dame."

Fred Hundertwasser was made quarter-master,
responsible for rations overall,
but Pissarro took charge of white spirit and rum
stored in clearly marked tanks
with the strict injunction that confusing the two
could poison the crew,
might presage disaster
and very well lead to him walking the plank.

Each ship had its parrot as custom dictates,
a Hopper, a Whistler,
who looked down from their yard-arms
heads cocked, beady eyed
and berated the efforts of any who slacked
with a torrent of foul-beaked cackling cries.

Came the day when all was ready at last.

With the first burst from the east
of a favourable breeze,
Magritte gave the word to both crews.
Manet and Monet hauled at the sheets,
the skull and crossbones unfurled from each mast;
Van Dongen and Ensor smartly weighed anchors,
while rooted ashore
Rousseau and Renoir cast all painters away
and both masterly state-of-the art barques
were finally loose
and straining to cut through the waves.


Hearties, thanks for reading. S ;-)

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Myopia

Let's give this theme of short-sightedness a metaphorical interpretation.

There's a General Election in the offing. It's a priceless opportunity for Britons to exercise our democratic right to vote for a national government that will shape our fortunes as citizens for the next however many years.

I hope the campaign will be lively, articulate, honest, inclusive, far-reaching, passionate even; with electioneering that focuses on policies rather than personalities, balanced debates that explore the key social and economic challenges facing 21st century Britain, journalism that engages people's emotional intelligence (not just their emotions), politicians who act with integrity and Spin Doctors who can play a mean guitar. It would be refreshing if we were offered a political blueprint that fosters social cohesion, rewards enterprise and initiative, sustains the less-privileged, cares for the environment, prioritises education for life and generally enhances the common weal in the long term.

I worry that we might be served up a campaign that is cynical, partisan, jingoistic, preys on fears and prejudices and fails to connect meaningfully with a significant percentage of the population.

Regardless of the nature of the upcoming campaign, I hope everybody reading this will cast their vote in May. I could never understand why anyone would opt not to vote. Sometimes, admittedly, it might seem to be an exercise in endorsing the lesser of several evils, but better an informed democratic choice than an apathetic abdication of that right.

Myopia

Welcome to Myopia!

This is no country

for wise men.

If the fuel holds out

there may a be short-sight-seeing tour

of our great excesses -

a chance to catch the fevered star

in brilliant, fulminating flow,

waxing lyrical as our resistance folds;

participation perhaps in a goose-step chase

up some blind ideological alley;

VIP tickets to one of our infamous wild night rallies,

watching us burn bridges, books and babies. 

Fear is short-sighted.

We never thought

we would end up this way.

The clatter of the jackboot,

incessant beating of the drum,

and rumble of our death machines

makes cowards of us all.

We only wanted easy answers,

cosy lies;

but in the final analysis

here is what we find -

that too much massed ovation

has made a nation blind.

So warm the ghost of freezing conscience,

warn your countrymen of our despair.

Help prevent Myopia from ever happening there.

 

Thanks for reading. Have a good week, S :-)

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