Paralysis

Yesterday evening I was stuck for something to cook for dinner. I had a lot of random stuff in the fridge (including peppers, onions, half a jar of sundried tomato pesto and some black olives which were possibly on the turn) and so I made a sort of tomato-ey gumbo with whatever I had to hand, and then my eye fell on an odd little box of artisan grain my husband had picked up on a shopping trip a few days before. I’d never used it before, but it looked intriguing.

‘How hard can it be?’ I thought. I measured out the appropriate amount, cooked it as per the instructions, and kept an eagle eye. It smelled strange, but not bad. We ate it all when it was ready, and it was flippin’ lovely – even if I do say so myself. It was only after dinner was done that I thought to put the name of the grain into Google to see what else I could do with it, and one of the first hits I got was that this grain – called freekeh – is commonly used in Syria.

A dish made with freekeh – not, needless to say, the one I made!
Photo Credit: avlxyz via Compfight cc

That gave me pause.

I wonder how commonly used it is in today’s Syria. I wonder how many families are sitting down to a meal of freekeh, lamb, cumin and coriander today, right now, in that beleaguered country. It made my meal feel strange within me; the idea that I had eaten the traditional food of a country which has been, and is being, ripped into tiny shreds, shedding its terrified people like dandelion seeds on the wind, made me upset. It brought me face to face, again, with the disgusting reality of our time, the humanitarian crisis which is spreading like an inkblot across the face of the earth.

Nobody can have missed the dreadful images in the media yesterday. I don’t want to describe them, even, let alone link to an article containing them or go so far as to share them here myself. Let it be enough to say that such images, used as clickbait by magazines and newspapers, shared – perhaps in good faith, or in a well-meaning way, by people who were ‘appalled’ – should never have been made public in the way they were. Lives were lost in the most tragic way imaginable. The people were not actors in a movie; they were not posed for effect. They were real people, with families and loved ones and personal histories and dreams of a better future, and they died.

They died, and we used their final images to sell newspapers and drive website traffic.

I am not a policy-maker nor a lawmaker nor even a person who knows, particularly, what the solution to the refugee crisis is. I know every country in Europe is not wealthy, my own included, and we all have problems of our own to deal with. Ireland has a huge homeless population, and many people who live in poverty – at least, by our own standards. We have a massive drug problem, not just confined to our cities. We aren’t good at dealing with immigrants, generally, tending to leave people who arrive here as economic migrants or refugees in ‘direct provision‘ – one step up from prison – for years on end while their cases are ‘processed’. I do not know how to help the people fleeing persecution, war, terror and tyranny in Syria and elsewhere. I just know that we must do something. We must demand that our government steps up their commitment to take refugees, in far greater numbers than they’re currently promising. We must overhaul our systems. We must find space, not only to deal with the people fleeing for their lives who so desperately need our help, but also to deal with our own people who are lost in the system. I don’t accept that there is no money there to accomplish this; I don’t accept that there is no public will to make this a reality. Nobody wants to see a repeat of yesterday’s terrible news. The people of Europe, at grassroots level, are donating food and goods and money in huge amounts to support and welcome the refugees – it’s the lawmakers, and the boundary-guards, who are dragging their heels.

People are not fleeing Syria because they’ve heard Europe is a gravy train. People are fleeing Syria because their own rulers are throwing them to the dogs. People are fleeing because they have no choice. Who would choose to do what they’re doing, unless there was literally no option? And what sort of people would throw up barriers at the other end, trapping those running for their lives against a wall of bureaucracy, stopping them from finding a safer place to bring their children up in? I don’t want to be part of that wall, but it can be hard to avoid feeling paralysed in the face of so much need, so much sorrow, so much desperation and anger and fear.

I don’t know what to do. I just know that we can’t leave people to die. All I’ve managed to do so far is sign a petition to ask my government to step up its response. It feels like such a feeble and meaningless thing, but I honestly don’t know what other action I can take. And who am I to even have an opinion, anyway, just one tiny person in one small country on the fringes of the European continent?

I’m a human being, just like every one of those refugees. That’s who. And I don’t want any more of them to die on the beaches of my continent. Not in my name.

Saturday Book Review – ‘The Lastling’

I freely admit that the main reason I picked up this book was because it had a snowy landscape on the cover. Anyone who’s been around here for longer than five minutes knows that, while I’m not terribly fond of snow in reality, I love reading about it. I’m fascinated by the Polar regions and those distant icy fastnesses of the world where anything – and anyone – can happen.

Image: readingmatters.co.uk

The second reason I picked it up is this: it’s published by Oxford University Press. Nine times out of ten, the children’s books published by OUP are worth checking out. This one was definitely worth the effort.

Philip Gross’ 2003 novel was a gripping affair from start to its Apocalypse Now-tinged ending, easily holding my attention and keeping me guessing – and that’s no easy feat. It tells the stories of Paris, a privileged fourteen-year-old American girl on a trip to the Himalayas with her distinctly strange uncle, and Tahr, a twelve-year-old boy who has been taken on by an elderly Buddhist monk, Shengo, as his apprentice. This pair of vastly different children end up realising exactly how similar they are, and how far they’ll go to protect something dear to them both – and how badly the odds are stacked against them, from all corners. It’s a book which, while having distinctly ‘otherworldly’ tones, is also firmly grounded in the real – Paris comes from a home which hasn’t been broken so much as smashed, and Tahr’s early life is a blur of painful memories involving burning, and pain, and being separated from his mother. Paris’ uncle, Franklin, is a man with more money than conscience, and his motives for coming to the Himalayas are far from noble. As well as that, the region is being torn apart by a brutal civil war, into which the children find themselves being thrust as they struggle to escape from the enemies who wish to destroy them, and that which they wish to protect.

Even though this book is, by most accounts, an ‘oldie’, it was certainly new to me. I was also unfamiliar with the author. I don’t want to give away too much about this precious thing the children want to save, though, for fear of spoiling a surprise for other readers – though, one look at the book’s cover, as I’ve shown it above, gives a multitude of clues.

Here’s an alternative cover, which is almost as intriguing.

Image: fantasticfiction.co.uk

The book is well paced, particularly as it draws to its conclusion; there are brutal scenes near the end, ones which bring home the reality of war and the truth of what it’s like to be at the mercy of people with no scruples, but they don’ t feel forced, or overdone. I loved the closing scenes of the book, and it’s one of those stories where I feel, had I been the author, I wouldn’t have changed a word. I enjoyed Philip Gross’ writing style, particularly in the scenes he writes about Paris on her own – these seem sparky and true to life, and her dialogue is great. He deals well with Tahr and his relationship with Shengo, and shows the delicacy of his growing friendship with Paris which transcends the profound differences in their backgrounds and experiences. An early scene, where Tahr loses someone he loves and blames himself for it, is moving and memorable, and perfectly pitched. Paris’ relationship with Franklin reminded me a little of Sym’s with her uncle Victor in ‘The White Darkness’, another OUP children’s book which I also really enjoyed; Franklin, despite his brains and money and skill, seems a little one-note and flat, mainly because there’s not a lot to him besides his psychopathy. Perhaps, indeed, this is the point.

‘The Lastling’ is a book about family, and love, and – in particular – children’s relationships with their mothers, and how important these relationships are. The contrasts between the various mothers in the text, and their connections to their children, are stark, and we see the differing levels of commitment, sacrifice and love offered by each mother to her child. There can scarcely be a more emotive thing for a children’s book to take as its central motif, and the way it’s used in this book is masterful. It draws a character which might seem otherwise completely impossible to relate to so close to the reader as to be almost uncomfortable, and in the process makes us realise a few dark truths about humanity, and our role in the destruction of the world around us. It’s not a new theme, by any means – mankind as the great destroyer – but I’ve never seen it handled quite like this book handles it.

In short, this is one of those rare books which will appeal equally to boys and girls, and should also be extremely readable for adults – it has war and guts in spades, but at its heart it’s a book about connection and emotion. It’s a book about humanity, and what makes humanity special and separate from the rest of the animal kingdom (hint: not a lot), and which should make anyone who reads it think for a while about the arrogance of our species and what, exactly, we’re basing that arrogance upon.

In short – recommended. Read it, but be prepared to be angry.

Tahr helping Paris up a cliff-face, as described near the end of the book.
Image: learnerscavalcade.blogspot.ie, via Google images

Book Review Saturday – ‘When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit’

I’ve been aware of the writer and illustrator Judith Kerr for many years, knowing her only as the creator of the wonderful classics ‘The Tiger Who Came to Tea’ and the ‘Mog’ series. Recently I watched a TV documentary about her life and career and realised that there was far more to this author than met the eye.

Judith Kerr
Image: theguardian.com

In this – her 90th year – one of the ways in which Ms Kerr’s life’s achievement is being celebrated is by republishing some of her books for older readers in special commemorative editions. One of these books is ‘When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit,’ the first in a collection of stories about her youth which has become known as ‘Out of the Hitler Time.’ The other books in this series are ‘The Other Way Round’ and ‘A Small Person Far Away,’ which I hope to get to as soon as possible.

I had no idea until a few weeks ago that Judith Kerr was German by birth; she had always seemed quintessentially English, to me. I never realised that she is the daughter of a prominent German-Jewish intellectual who had feared for his safety, and that of his family, because of his avowed anti-Nazi stance, and I never realised that, in 1933 – on the eve of the election which would bring Hitler to power – she and her family fled Germany for the relative safety of Switzerland, leaving all they had ever known behind. Judith Kerr went on to emigrate to England, where she has had a lengthy and successful career, first at the BBC and then as an author and illustrator, but it is in this book that we learn of how things were for her before she found the security of a safe and settled life. ‘When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit’ is the story of a girl named Anna and her brother Max, who – along with their writer father and loving mother – are forced to leave Germany in 1933 because they are Jewish.

It is Judith Kerr’s own story, to a large extent. How she manages to tell it in such a matter-of-fact, clear-eyed way, then, is beyond me.

The 2013 Commemorative Edition of the book.
Image: bookmavenmary.blogspot.com

Judith Kerr described in the documentary how her own son, as a child, watched the film ‘The Sound of Music’ and felt satisfied that he now knew exactly how things had been for his mother as a girl. The highly unrealistic, melodramatic escape from the Nazis as portrayed in the film pleased the young boy, but it did not please his mother. ‘When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit’ is her attempt to show her son how it felt to be German and Jewish in the 1930s, and how it really was to see your father bent double with worry and stress, and your mother working hard to keep the family together, and you – as a girl of nine, turning ten – struggling to understand why all this was happening.

For a reader like me, who cut her teeth on ‘The Diary of a Young Girl’ and ‘The Silver Sword,’ this book is not what I expected. ‘When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit’ is primarily a book about a family, and its efforts to stay safe and united in the face of great evil. We are introduced to Anna as she walks home from school one snowy day with her friend Elsbeth, and we meet her family – her genial, intelligent and gentle father, her ladylike and refined mother, her boisterous and fun-loving brother – until, one day, Anna wakes to find that her father has disappeared. He has fled to Zürich, where he wishes to prepare a new life for his family, and within a few weeks the others must follow him. They must also make haste, because all over Germany Jews are beginning to feel the iron hand of oppression – people are having their passports confiscated, and encroachments into their personal freedom are just beginning. Their family friend, ‘Onkel’ Julius, tells Anna’s father that he is being ridiculous – ‘this will all blow over,’ he feels. Anna’s father is over-reacting, he is sure.

Nevertheless, the family leaves with as much speed as they can muster without drawing undue attention to themselves. Within a fortnight, Anna’s mother has arranged their departure, and the removal of all their belongings, and they are making ready to flee. Anna’s father is quite famous, as a writer and journalist, and her life in Berlin is comfortable. The disappearance of such a high-profile figure as her father is hard to conceal, but they manage it, explaining his absence by saying that he is ill with ‘flu; then, finally, they take a fraught, tense train journey toward the Swiss border. Anna and her brother are delighted with the cat belonging to the lady who shares their carriage, and are happy to amuse themselves by looking out the windows at the new world zooming by – but Anna’s mother’s white-knuckled grip on her handbag, and her pinched face, tell the reader all they need to know about how much fear she was in. The story follows the family as they move from hotel to boarding house, to cheap rented flat, as their money begins to dwindle. They lose their household staff, and Anna’s mother must learn how to do tasks she has never before needed to perform in order to keep the children clothed and fed. Anna’s father cannot find well-paying work – nobody is willing to employ a writer with his profile, or at least not for the money he could earn in Berlin. They leave Switzerland for Paris, and then finally they go to London.

This is not a book about the war, as such. There are no moments of violence here, and no descriptions of atrocity. This makes the poignant scenes – the loss of childhood innocence, the leaving behind of beloved toys, the separation from friends and family, the death of a beloved person – all the more powerful. This is a story being told by a ten-year-old girl, trying to explain to us how it felt to live in these troubled times, and how little sense it all made. A powerful scene early in the book shows Max and Anna happily playing with two German children – that is, until the mother of their new playmates comes outside and catches them. “‘Siegfried!’ she called shrilly. ‘Gudrun! I told you you were not to play with these children!'” (p. 70); the German mother then removes her children from Anna and Max’s company and refuses to let them play together any more. To the children, this seems ridiculous, unfair and stupid – and to the reader, seeing nothing more than the names given to the young Germans (both of them taken from Germanic mythology and folklore), it is clear what sort of people these Germans are. However, we share one thing with our childish narrator – the separation of these children, two of them Jewish and two Aryan, but all German – is ridiculous, unfair and stupid. It is a brilliant point, cleverly and gently made.

‘When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit’ is a slow, seemingly slight, and simply-written book. It is not a war diary, and it is not a book filled with explosions and battles. It is the tale of one family remaining steady in choppy waters, and a powerfully moving testament to the ways in which war rips apart the fabric of normal life, severing families and separating loved ones. It is a piece of lace covering a dark black hole.

It is deservedly a classic.

Never Forget

I’m not sure why I get so emotional around this time of year. The closer it gets to Armistice Day, the more my heartstrings swell at images and footage of people all over the world paying their respects to their war dead, and remembering their own experiences of war. Clearly (although I’m old) I wasn’t around during the war and Ireland was (notionally) neutral during WWII, so I shouldn’t have a huge connection to any sort of commemoration service.

And yet…

Image: telegraph.co.uk

I watched a special programme aired by the BBC over the weekend in which a man who is now eighty-eight years old returned to the beaches of Normandy where, as an eighteen-year-old, he had landed with his compatriots in an attempt to liberate German-occupied France. He described his journey toward the beach, and how the fear of what awaited them was almost outweighed by the seasickness caused by the rough waters; he relived the feeling of the flat-bottomed vessel making landfall and the knowledge that nothing but his own speed and agility would save him as he raced up the beach toward the German lines, with bullets zipping – like ‘a load of birds singing’ – past his head.

He recalled picking up the bodies of his fallen comrades once the battle was over, boys of seventeen and eighteen years of age. ‘They never had a life,’ he said, gazing around the beach, and he wept, remembering his friends, boys he had trained and fought and laughed with, all of whom gave their lives in order that future generations might be free. I wept too, because there was something so deeply moving about a man of such age and experience demonstrating how the pain of war never truly leaves you, and how the memories of what you experience during a time like that are always there, just beneath the surface.

It also made me think about the terrible loss of life, and the unimaginable sacrifice offered up by so many hundreds of thousands, without which none of us would be living the life we have.

It’s such an easy thing to forget, the suffering of generations gone before us. I often wonder whether the world we have created is something that a fallen soldier from the Great War or the Second World War would be proud of. ‘Yes – this was worth dying for. This world is the perfect Utopia we dreamt of as we crawled through the muck of the trenches or fought hand to hand in the villages of France.’ Is this what a soldier would say if it was possible to bring him back for long enough to take a look around? I’m not so sure.

I wish there was no need for war, and I certainly wish humanity would stop fighting and killing one another over things like natural resources and money. Fighting for freedom and liberty, the right to live without the burden of tyranny, fighting to save your country from the oppression of an aggressor – that, I can do my best to understand. Without wishing to malign any country’s serving military, I nevertheless have to say that I think some of the wars being fought in our modern world are a lot harder to comprehend. Then, the average soldier has very little to do with the causes behind a war – he or she simply does their duty, and to the best of their ability.

Having said that, any man or woman who gives their all in the service of their country deserves to be respected and remembered, and perhaps it’s my innate pacifism that makes me so upset and sorrowful each Remembrance Day.

My thoughts are also with all those thousands of people killed, injured and left destitute by Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines. It makes me very sad, and angry, that it’s almost always the people who have the least who suffer the most during natural disasters, and I can’t help but think that climate change – which is, almost always, nothing to do with the people who suffer as a result of it – has a role to play in the terrible weather events of the last few years.

All in all, it’s a time for reflection and togetherness, and an opportunity to honour the memory of the war dead – who fought for what we now have – by helping one another, and doing our best to create a world they would be proud of.

Try to spread a little kindness today, in whatever way you can.

Image: monastery.com

 

What in the World?

This morning, we awoke to news of a further explosion in the United States. A fertiliser plant explosion has destroyed homes, businesses and lives in the town of West, near Waco, in Texas, and has caused an unspecified amount of deaths and injuries. Of course, when we hear ‘Waco’, we think of the horror that took place there twenty years ago, almost to the day; it almost seems unbelievable that an explosion would happen in the same area now. I’m praying that it turns out to have been caused by an explicable, understandable and ‘ordinary’ thing – I’m praying that it turns out to be accidental. Between the horror at the Boston Marathon, American politicians being targeted with ricin-laced mail, the war in Syria, the situation in North Korea, and so many other things… What in the world is going on?

It’s hard to keep your head on straight when the news is bursting out all over with stories of inexplicable cruelty and (seemingly) mindless savagery. When you realise that there are so many people in the world who are denied even the most basic chance to live their life as they would choose, perhaps because their country is embroiled in war, or ensnared by poverty, or both, it makes the choice to be a writer, for instance, seem at once completely frivolous and vitally important. Frivolous because I am in the fortunate position of living every day without the threat of destruction, and vitally important because if we are not creating, then what’s the point of even being here, on earth, in this time and place?

The more I hear about destruction and death, and the more news I watch about dictatorships and terrorism and war and imposition of unfair laws on a populace struggling to survive and military posturing with no thought to the safety of the people… well. The more I feel that creating something – no matter what it is – is the most important calling a person could have. How else will we fight off destruction and dark-hearted sorrow? Not with more aggression, more terror, more fear – but with light, and laughter, and song, and new life. It’s at once the simplest and most difficult thing in the world.

Image: warchild.org

I’m not really making a whole lot of sense this morning. My flu is still not entirely gone, and I am very tired. I’m almost three-quarters done with my redraft of ‘Eldritch’, which is great, and I learned yesterday that another of my short stories has been accepted for publication; I’m also (possibly) shortlisted for another competition. My database of stories written and submitted is looking nice and fat and healthy, and I’m pretty happy with what I’ve read of ‘Eldritch’ so far. Of course, it’ll need at least one more going-over before I’ll be happy to send it anywhere, but I can actually see it happening now – it seems real, achievable, and within my grasp. I am going to query a novel with agents and publishers. Even getting to this point is a dream come true.

But, sometimes, when you turn on the TV or search the web for news, and you realise just what some people are living with and dealing with on a daily basis, you would have to stop and wonder: ‘What is the point? What difference does it make, to anyone but me, that I’ve managed to achieve these tiny things?’ But I have to believe that creating something, writing a story that might bring some laughter and happiness into someone’s life, or giving a hug when one is needed, or sending support to a friend in need, or even just caring about what happens to other people, makes a difference. If I didn’t, I’m not sure what would keep me going.

Sorry for the depressing post today. I’ll try to be all about the kittens and the sparkliness tomorrow, okay?

Image: blogs.warwick.ac.uk

 

Wednesday Write-In #33

This week’s prompt words are:

chloroform  ::  banana split  ::  stench  ::  cracker  ::  shoestring budget

 

Battle

A distant boom rattled the phials on the dispensary shelves and started the lights swinging in their fittings, flickering as they went. One more hit like that and we could probably kiss our power supply goodbye. The stench of smoke and dust hung in the air like a veil, giving the stink of death and disease a run for its money. I adjusted my facemask, settling it more closely over my nose, and carried on with my rounds.

‘Doctor!’ I heard, from somewhere behind me. ‘Doctor!’ I turned in time to see a young, familiar-looking orderly come sprinting towards me, dodging cots and outflung limbs and puddles on the floor with a practised stride.

‘Come on, Jesse,’ I said, as he drew near. ‘You know I’m no more a doctor than you are.’ I tried to keep my voice down. If there were conscious patients nearby, they didn’t need to hear me confirm any suspicion they might have that this whole place was being run on a shoestring budget, by people who were making it up as they went along. I was pretty sure it wouldn’t be conducive to their attempts to recover. Before the war, I had been a scientist of sorts; it made me the best person they had for the job, but it didn’t make me a doctor. Just like putting an ungainly pile of injured and dying people into what had once been the refectory of the long-dead convent didn’t make it a hospital.

‘Whatever,’ Jesse hissed as he drew near. ‘You know what I mean, Elias. Will you just come with me?’ He barely gave me a chance to nod before we were off, tearing between the corridors of beds like we were playing one of our boyhood games.

‘What is it?’ I said, when we reached the corridor. There were patients lying here too, the stronger ones; their beds were further apart. Jesse and I had some space to talk. I pulled down my facemask to focus on my friend.

‘It’s the child,’ he said, his eyes heavy. ‘He’s awake, but he’s delirious. He’s calling for his mother, and for Johanna – we presume his nurse, or a maid. He keeps telling her to make him a banana split, whatever that means.’ I took a deep breath, and thought about how long it had been since any of us had seen a child. If his house hadn’t been shelled, I might have lived the rest of my life without clapping my eyes on one. But we didn’t have time to think about that now.

‘Let’s go,’ I said. Jesse led the way as we hurried up the dimly-lit corridor, the tiles running with damp, and covered in filth and condensation.

‘Has he been told about his family?’ I asked as we walked.

‘No,’ replied Jesse. ‘As I said, he’s not fully conscious. He thinks he’s still at home, from what we can gather. And – well, look. You know about the chloroform?’

‘No,’ I said, a sudden chill coating my lungs. ‘What about it?’

‘An orderly used up most of what we had left on an elderly woman this morning,’ he muttered. ‘She didn’t realise our stocks were so low. I haven’t told her yet what she’s done.’ My mind raced. It stood to reason the orderly wouldn’t know how bad things were. Nobody did, besides Jesse and me.

‘God,’ I said, realising. ‘But we may have to operate on the child.’ Jesse didn’t answer me, but he didn’t have to. In any case, there was nothing he could say. He threw me a sympathetic glance, shaking his head slightly, and I pretended not to see the tears in his eyes. We redoubled our pace, and within minutes a nurse was leading us to the child’s bedside. A fire blazed in the grate of his room, and the sheets on his bed were old, but cleaner than anyone else’s. As clean as we could make anything, these days.

‘Why are they pulling crackers?’ the boy muttered as we drew near. His eyes were closed, his colour high. ‘Tell them to stop pulling crackers, Johanna.’ His face was slick with sweat, and his wounds were bandaged. Even without examining him, though, I could smell that our attempts to stop his infection hadn’t worked. He was going to need surgery, and there was nobody to do it but me. I glanced up at the nurse, whose worried eyes told me he knew what I was going to say.

‘We’ll have to prep the surgery room,’ I said to him, in a low voice. ‘Round up everyone we can find to try to keep this child alive, and scour this whole place for anaesthetic. I don’t care where you get it.’ The nurse nodded at me before glancing up at Jesse; then, he hurried out of the room. My eyes fell on the child’s face again. He glowed in the firelight. As I knelt by his side, stroking his hot, clammy head, a tiny frown wrinkled his forehead, and he licked his dry lips. He opened his eyes, red-rimmed and sore, and gazed straight at me without recognition. He blinked, once or twice, before his eyes drifted closed again.

It wasn’t until I felt Jesse’s hand, his strong fingers, resting on my shoulder, that I realised I was crying. I hurried to wipe my face as the nurse bustled back into the room.

‘Doctor,’ he said, out of breath. ‘We’re ready to begin when you are.’

Troubled Waters

I slept badly last night. Or, rather, I slept, but it was disturbed and not at all restful. This was because I spent the whole night having the same nightmare over and over, and eventually I woke myself up early because I couldn’t face going through it again. The dreams were so upsetting that when I woke up, and realised for sure that what I’d been dreaming about hadn’t happened, I almost wept with relief.

I often wonder what the point of nightmares is; why do our brains feel the need to pump our dreams full of terror? In this case, I think perhaps my brain was reinforcing my love for a particular person by making me dream about what life would be like without them. At least, that’s how I’m going to try to rationalise it! Perhaps it was a way of dealing with the grief and horror of losing someone close, without actually having to go through it for real. Still, though. Whatever the reason, I really hope my brain leaves me in peace tonight and lets me sleep undisturbed.

I wonder, too, if my troubled sleep last night had anything to do with the news bulletin I watched yesterday evening. I saw footage of people dying, elections being interfered with, people being savagely attacked as they tried to exercise their franchise in an attempt to bring some sort of peace to their country, children living in camps for Internally Displaced Persons, countries where whole generations of people have lived and died in war… is it any wonder I’d take all that to my sleeping world, and that it would disturb my rest as it disturbed my waking life? Add to that the trial of a man in Japan accused of murdering a young Irish woman who grew up not far from where I grew up, the gangland and sectarian crime still rife in parts of my country, and the parlous state of the economy, and you have the perfect nightmare brew.

Ireland’s police force – An Garda Siochana
Image: en.wikipedia.org

In Ireland, the police force is called ‘An Garda Síochana’, which means ‘The Guardians of the Peace’ in English. By and large Ireland is peaceful – certainly, I’m lucky to live in a place where the worst I have to contend with is noisy neighbours. But there are parts of Ireland, as there are parts of every country, where the Gardaí have a harder job. Peace was hard-won in this country, and I’d hate to see a return to the ‘bad old days’; desperation still drives a lot of people, though, and the causes that divided and hurt so many people in the past are still alive and well, albeit quieter. Sometimes, when I think about how thin the layer of civilisation is, and how it relies very much on everyone co-operating, I tend to get a bit light-headed.

The old saying – that ‘we’re always only three (or four, or nine) meals away from anarchy’ – has often played on my mind. When that’s coupled with my innate suspicion of getting too reliant on technology, and my natural tendency towards anxiety, I fear I’m only one step removed from the tinfoil hat brigade.

Image: bigrab.wordpress.com

But I remind myself how well the world does work, despite everything, and how there are always more people who want to work together and strive for the same goal than there are people who want to tear it all down and dance amid the ruins. I’d like to see a society where every person is valued and cared for, and where compassion is the ruling force – ‘where love is Lord of all’, as the old song goes. But keeping my own home, my own mind as a haven of peace is probably as close as I’ll get to that.

As a weird little finishing note, I’ve just texted the person about whom I had all the disturbing dreams last night. Their reply read something like: ‘That’s so weird. I spent all last night having crazy dreams about you! Get out of my head!’

Is it time for this? After me: Doodeedoodoo, doodeedoodoo….

Image: katymunger.wordpress.com