Oi can you hear me?

Six o’clock was the time to settle down for a couple of hours of news. The BBC, ITV, Channel four, all with their version of events.

Not any more.

I cannot watch reports from around the world without crying.

I am not an historian, politician or commentator, I am merely an old lady who gives a fuck, but, like most of us, I am utterly powerless to help men, women and children who are but 7hours and 37minutes away.

The blue eyed, turbaned Talimen walk tall with their American weapons. The old whiskered tyrants, hug each other on ‘their’ tarmac. Old, uneducated bullies clapping each others backs. Fanatical leaders who now hold a country to ransom, smiling into the camera, beseeching us to believe them when they say that women won’t be made to wander around under a burqa, a robe that covers the entire body from the top of the head to the ground, with only a mesh screen allowing the wearer to see in front of her.

Beauty shops, hair salons, women’s clothes emporiums being shut ‘For Good.’ at lest that’s what’s being reported. A country under the rule of men and more men; men with degrees and men with guns and men with faith and men with money and men with a warped view of what women are. I get incandescent with rage if the old git criticises my dungarees – how the fuck would I survive in Kandahar?

A whole nation imprisoned, living in fear, it makes me claustrophobic just to write about it. A whole land full of beautiful people bowing to the cruelty of a handful of chauvinist zealots.

The world’s gone mad. Nandos and KFC have run out of chicken, farmers have run out of beetroot pickers and our Government has run out of ideas. In the olden days we would’ve laughed, but now it just doesn’t feel that funny.

Endless posts about the history of Afghanistan; endless accusations and conclusions; talking doth not make for a peaceful world.

Stripping the assets from greedy arseholes, dismantling corrupt regimes, looking capitalism in the eyes and speaking the truth is the only way forward isn’t it?

But how? Time it was I supported freedom fighters, but the bombs don’t work. I’ve had two reliable commentators say to me that Afghanistan should be emptied of the good and then an Atomic bomb should be dropped on the rest of them. Flatten the Godforsaken country. “It worked in Japan,” they say. But did it, does it, should it? What have we come to as a species that wiping each other out is the answer. Although, there are thems that say we are so overcrowded the globe could do with a good spring clean.

I know if I’m feeling powerless everybody is feeling powerless. Chattering broadcasters are the litmus paper for the rest of us.

‘A Litmus indicator solution turns red in acidic solutions and blue in alkaline solutions. It turns purple in neutral solutions. Litmus paper is usually more reliable, and comes as red litmus paper and blue litmus paper.’

So whether I’m red or blue, and you all know my colouring, I am as reliable as you are. I’ve never been blue in my life, and I’m as red as they come, staying purple is not am option for me which is why Ive been sacked from pretty much every job I’ve done.

I know I have to remain impartial but why should I? You get to where I am – ancient and beyond – and you realise that holding frantically onto the saddle as the bucking bronco dashes you to the ground is ineffectual. The cowboys who win melt into the horse, go with the leaping and jumping, you could say they go with the flow.

Fucking platitude after platitude, cliché after cliché, but it has been said before. There ain’t nothing original about what’s happening, only now we’ve become desperate. It’s now scientifically proven – it’s official, human beings are killing the planet.

Dur!

So, as Afghani mothers are throwing their babies into barbed wire, as men in frocks toll the final bell, as the blame game becomes an Olympic sport, what are we to do?

Where do we turn for assistance. A Hopi chief has declared that we are at an unprecedented point in our history, that we see what’s happening either as a hole or a portal.

‘What’s the difference between a portal and a wormhole?
Wormholes are theoretical bridges in spacetime, linking two different parts of space that are very far apart but can quickly be travelled between via the wormhole. Portals are basically just doors and entrances. At each end of the wormhole, there is a portal’

Well there you are, even Mr. Wiki can tell the difference between sinking and swimming. It’s of no help at all; it is but a reminder that we are but mites in the teeming nonsense we call life.

I had tea with a delicious young woman. She escaped from East Germany and has just been given citizenship over here. Her husband works in the Intensive Care Unit of a local hospital. He is drained, broken and very, very tired. She is lonely and angry at the way her husband is being thrown to the wolves, as he sleeps over and tries to stop people dying. Foreign nurses are leaving the NHS in droves and going back to their own countries. She is thinking of doing the same. It took me, a fucking old crone, to remind her that human beings are only human after all. That we hang our curtains but only wash and repair them when they get really dirty or are covered in moth holes.

It’s now time to do the laundry isn’t it?

Not twisting the threads to break them but gently squeezing the fabric so that we can rehang them.

I’m going to tend my cabbages now, pick my beans and feed my tomatoes – how lucky and privileged am I?

I wish us all well.