#104
Yesterday's Nice Thing: Breaking the back of the garden and for the first time EVER feeling like I KNEW what I was doing
I have overcome the exhaustion and am now back... the first few days of the holidays are always the same. I ALWAYS think I have become completely lazy or SOMETHING has happened to me because I am not packing my bags and running off somewhere, or cleaning my house from top to toe, but the truth is the holidays are for resting. So rest we did - the kids and myself. We stayed home and the weather helped.
Yesterday Ghin went for a swim in Helen's Bay with the Glencraig lot and he said he thought he was going to DIE from the cold. How can people swim in such COLD water he asked. I said, I do not know. Interestingly this is the first he has complained about it. Because when he was in Donegal a couple of years ago he did not. I was thinking about the warm seas of that place... Indonesia? I asked, helpfully. Yes! he replid. Well, Ghin, I said, that's where I learned to swim and people say you can put on wet suits... I am yet to be convinced.
Heard a blackbird alarm call there... I stood outside at 4 am and it was so still and silent. It was like waking in Singapore when I was studying for any exam. I'd wake up and there would be complete silence all round. I'd turn on the radio, the BBC World Service and then I would start revising. I can't imagine... can't imagine...how long ago that was. I have a really vivid memory of studying for my O levels in Bramer Drive. Sitting at the table with the single light on, and the silence, the coolness of the morning. A coolness that no longer exists in Singapore because it is now so built up. Even in Gardens, everyone has gotten rid of their gardens to create these monstrosities.
I am going to have an early breakfast and then do some reading before I start gardening later on.
----
I have just read an article by Lyra McKee the journalist who was shot during a riot in Derry. What astonishes me is the rush to judgement and condemnation. I do not condone what has happened, of course I don't, but at the same time, I believe that by and large human beings are rational people - even the maniacs who sell arms and destroy the Earth, it is just their rationale is profit at all costs - and violence does not happen if the ground is not accepting of it. So, what made that ground accepting? History and neglect, and the abundance of despair which ends up in either you sink or you fight back. And people fight back in the only way they know how? It is just like with suicide bombs. I have never ever condemned the suicide bomber - but the state - the state bears the responsibility - all evidence points to it.
I was lying in bed beside Ghin after having read that article on the suicide of the ceasefire babies - and just wanting to weep as I looked at Ghin and Oisin. Born in the generation just after the Good Friday agreement, they have not only never known sectarian violence, but also have grown up in a positively supportive environment. Wherever possible I have tried my very very best to not end up propping up a morally bankrupt regime. For many years it felt like it was a pointless exercise. Now it feels like there is a day of reckoning - how will the establishment react? Will they voluntarily give up what they have accrued over the years or will they defend it with bullets? The track record is not good - as in a Hunger Games scenario where the army and police are used again the civilians is not far fetched. This is the next phase which I am now really worried about. The the establishment and elites are so thick and so entitled that they will do what they have always done - and it will take another World War to put everything to rights. I really hope it doesn't come to that. At the same time their reaction thus far is not encouraging.
Their solution for everything is more violence, less freedom. More laws, more curfews, more police, more beatings... and being too clever. This is the part which drives me nuts. Instead of being too clever, would it not be easier to be kinder and more generous? What do they do with all that money anyway? How many luxury this and that can you take until it all becomes hollow and meaningless? How shallow and vacuous must you be that you need to be entertained your entire existence? Pharaohs and kings were born into the delusion - what is anyone else's excuse? Even if you WERE born to it, can't you see that it isn't working?
So, yeah, I am afraid. But now I am gardening... that is the only thing we can do now - garden. Garden and wait.
I have overcome the exhaustion and am now back... the first few days of the holidays are always the same. I ALWAYS think I have become completely lazy or SOMETHING has happened to me because I am not packing my bags and running off somewhere, or cleaning my house from top to toe, but the truth is the holidays are for resting. So rest we did - the kids and myself. We stayed home and the weather helped.
Yesterday Ghin went for a swim in Helen's Bay with the Glencraig lot and he said he thought he was going to DIE from the cold. How can people swim in such COLD water he asked. I said, I do not know. Interestingly this is the first he has complained about it. Because when he was in Donegal a couple of years ago he did not. I was thinking about the warm seas of that place... Indonesia? I asked, helpfully. Yes! he replid. Well, Ghin, I said, that's where I learned to swim and people say you can put on wet suits... I am yet to be convinced.
Heard a blackbird alarm call there... I stood outside at 4 am and it was so still and silent. It was like waking in Singapore when I was studying for any exam. I'd wake up and there would be complete silence all round. I'd turn on the radio, the BBC World Service and then I would start revising. I can't imagine... can't imagine...how long ago that was. I have a really vivid memory of studying for my O levels in Bramer Drive. Sitting at the table with the single light on, and the silence, the coolness of the morning. A coolness that no longer exists in Singapore because it is now so built up. Even in Gardens, everyone has gotten rid of their gardens to create these monstrosities.
I am going to have an early breakfast and then do some reading before I start gardening later on.
----
I have just read an article by Lyra McKee the journalist who was shot during a riot in Derry. What astonishes me is the rush to judgement and condemnation. I do not condone what has happened, of course I don't, but at the same time, I believe that by and large human beings are rational people - even the maniacs who sell arms and destroy the Earth, it is just their rationale is profit at all costs - and violence does not happen if the ground is not accepting of it. So, what made that ground accepting? History and neglect, and the abundance of despair which ends up in either you sink or you fight back. And people fight back in the only way they know how? It is just like with suicide bombs. I have never ever condemned the suicide bomber - but the state - the state bears the responsibility - all evidence points to it.
I was lying in bed beside Ghin after having read that article on the suicide of the ceasefire babies - and just wanting to weep as I looked at Ghin and Oisin. Born in the generation just after the Good Friday agreement, they have not only never known sectarian violence, but also have grown up in a positively supportive environment. Wherever possible I have tried my very very best to not end up propping up a morally bankrupt regime. For many years it felt like it was a pointless exercise. Now it feels like there is a day of reckoning - how will the establishment react? Will they voluntarily give up what they have accrued over the years or will they defend it with bullets? The track record is not good - as in a Hunger Games scenario where the army and police are used again the civilians is not far fetched. This is the next phase which I am now really worried about. The the establishment and elites are so thick and so entitled that they will do what they have always done - and it will take another World War to put everything to rights. I really hope it doesn't come to that. At the same time their reaction thus far is not encouraging.
Their solution for everything is more violence, less freedom. More laws, more curfews, more police, more beatings... and being too clever. This is the part which drives me nuts. Instead of being too clever, would it not be easier to be kinder and more generous? What do they do with all that money anyway? How many luxury this and that can you take until it all becomes hollow and meaningless? How shallow and vacuous must you be that you need to be entertained your entire existence? Pharaohs and kings were born into the delusion - what is anyone else's excuse? Even if you WERE born to it, can't you see that it isn't working?
So, yeah, I am afraid. But now I am gardening... that is the only thing we can do now - garden. Garden and wait.
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