GOOD GAME
My 13 year old friend Charlie set me a challenge during the week. “You should write a blog about the new trend. Are there more wheels in the world than doors or are there more doors than wheels? It’s a real debate.” What do you think? Our conversation became quite animated.
My take is that there are more wheels – cars, lorries, wheelchairs, trolleys, bikes, wheelbarrows. Charlie favours doors – homes, hotels, schools, offices, theatres. In homes wheels on chairs and sofas but probably more doors. I kept throwing up wheels but he hung in there: “You bring a fair point but I don’t think I’d like to switch sides to wheels as I pleaded allegiance to the doors.” We’re still at it and I have opened my eyes about wheels and counting doors as I go about my business.
Last week I was standing in the garden with a woman from Poland, a mistle thrush basking in the sun on the branch of a fir tree started to sing. We stood and listened and realised just how fortunate we were to be surrounded by beauty, peace and tranquility.
And we spoke of Ukraine and resilient women in war situations. Words are inadequate, money an important option, are prayers any better? This terrible theatre of war where the scenes change so rapidly and, at the moment, we can only watch.
Every mother has her children’s health and welfare at heart, the fear of illness or accident. One of my biggest fears came after the Chernobyl disaster when, in 1986, a cloud of radiation floated across from the Ukraine Russian border. I was in fear of my children’s lives, the stories of dreadful effects on people caught in the cloud, how could I save them from pain and unbearable suffering? For a brief moment there seemed only one answer, too terrible to contemplate. As the cloud drifted towards us, the government told us not to eat mountainy sheep and many people stopped eating root vegetables. Urban legend or fact that cases of leukaemia were linked to the disaster? I lost a brother and he was sure there was a connection.
Julia Paul is a highly respected award winning journalist who has travelled the world. In 2015 she set up workshops to train the women of Afghanistan in the art of communication, recording and writing about their experiences culminating in an archive of historical interest. Today those women are suppressed by the Taliban but activists still use their learned skills on-line risking awful reprisals. There’s no respect. Julia tells of a woman and her three children thrown out so her husband could marry the 14 year old cleaning girl. In order to provide for her four year old daughter, another woman remarried when her husband died. The girl inherited step-brothers and sisters and when she reached 13 one brother, also 13, asked her to marry him. Reluctantly she agreed, had her first child at 14 and at the time of Julia’s writing had five children and was happy. Seven years on I wonder what has happened, is she still alive, are her young children?
When I was working in Sudan during the Corridor of Peace in 1989 I met women whose men had survived the warring factions and fled to Ethiopia. Mothers headed north often walking up to two weeks trying to find sanctuary for themselves and their children in Khartoum and eventually reunite with their husbands, a vein hope. If they had money they paid for standing room on rickety buses making their way across the desert in unbearable heat. When a child died of starvation she would scratch a shallow grave in the sand and bury the tiny body, Giving birth meant squatting down and delivering your baby onto the scalding sand. The bus didn’t wait. Most harrowing of all, a mother having to decide which child to sell into slavery in order to feed her other children. Imagine a mother loving her sons and daughters so much she wouldn’t allow vaccinations against measles, to her every spot is a gift from God, the more spots the more blessings. This resulted is many blind teenagers. When, with a film crew, I was arrested in South Sudan and held by heavily armed Dinkas, we were told we could disappear and no one would ask questions. My thoughts flew to my children.
Yet with all this I can only imagine the fear women are going through in Ukraine. A happy life to a hell in days, trying to reach a border in the hope of freedom, carrying one small bag, a baby and a child by the hand. Living underground like frightened animals with the adrenalin running low as is food and water. Making Molotov cocktails to throw at the invaders. And all this news brought to us by brave steadfast journalists, many women with families at home sick with worry, watching them standing out on the war torn streets suppressing their own fears and emotions.
It seems almost indecent to enjoy life, to plan to go out for a cup of coffee with friends, to spoil yourself with a glass of wine or a chocolate cake for tea. I am a news junkie but it has proved too much, 5 Live at night has been replaced by Mozart and television coverage isn’t watched. I now get my news in papers, on Internet, perhaps a cowards way out, but the live coverage and the personal reports are too harrowing and the sense of impotency too great. Please send a miracle to stop the destruction of a people and their beautiful country.
FUNNY HA HA
This war veteran Colin Bell joked with the prime minister that he had reached this great old age thanks to alcohol, exercise and the love of a few good women – and the odd bad one. Ha Ha Ha. Very droll . Very old boys chat. Contrast with former RAF officer Leith Owen who left his life savings £2.5 million to Sid Vale Association a local conservation society in Sidmouth requesting a million flowers be planted. Now on the hill above the town is a cloud of golden daffodils.
STILL THE CASE
Well done to Ireland yesterday with their win over England on the rugby grounds of Twickenham and cheers Jonnu Sexton for all the great games you played over the years. But huge disappointment for Michael Conlan who was knocked out of the ring by Leigh Wood in last night’s World Featherweight title fight. I was listening and it was awful. Thank goodness he is only a bit battered and bruised and bravely has posted a message to fans to say he OK and will be back fighting sooner rather than later.
