Kindness

So fatootsed am I that I missed a party I was looking forward to for a month, so discombobulated am I that my God-daughters’ mum came, she had nowhere to sleep so the dawter decided to stay at her Godmothers’ so she could free her bed up.
She was happy to stay 16 miles away, whilst my God-daughter and I had an impromptu piano lesson.

She’s fifteen and stupidly brilliant. She made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck, made me cry and said she would even think about practicing.

So at 6’s and 7’s am I that I’ve just made a cuppa – 2.24 a.m. – and eaten a barrel load of biscuits that have left a salty taste in my mouth and a dent in my composure.

So agitated am I that I have three loads of ironing to do cos I’d forgotten that I had two loads to do before stripping the bed today.

The ‘oosbind and I had a row about how to put the clean duvet on because the mouthpiece was too tight. I held my tongue as I turned the duvet around inside the duvet cover like a midwife performing a breach birth.

Th God-daughter, her mother, me and him sat up and talked till late. My mouth went dry and the ‘orrible ‘usband said it was because I talked too much. He went to bed, the other two went to bed so I am in the peaceful silence of late night meanderings wondering why I feel so off centre.

And I think it’s because of Afghanistan. It’s as if the state of the world is being played out for all to see centred in that most desperate country. Weapons worn by men who bought them off us. Guns, tanks, camouflage jackets and hand-grenades provided by the wearisome war mongers of our society.

And the newspapers will continue to print such egregious stories, whilst the tabloid junk buckets will happily print incendiary, provocative stories so that news telling has now become a spiteful trash laden document of a society that has become spiteful and trashy.
If I see another young woman with her breasts hanging out, as she chunters her dignity on a pavement in Leeds, then laughs whilst her gusset is revealed in yet another fun filled night of bollox, I swear I may just have to stop reading Geordie Griegs paper.

Let me just make an aside. Born 16 December 1960 in Lambeth, Greig is the son of Sir Carron Greig and Monica Stourton, granddaughter of the 24th Lord Mowbray, Segrave and Stourton. Members of his father’s family have been royal courtiers for three generations — including his twin sister Laura, who was a lady-in-waiting to Diana, Princess of Wales. He attended Eton College and St Peter’s College, Oxford.

This Eton educated 50 year old edits the Daily Mail. This Oxford, Eton educated gentleman oversees the content in his paper that would make a cleric blush, and yet his bilge is informing our nation, and the nation buys into it. Let us not forget that our parliament is also made up of equally privileged men, who think nothing of exploiting the good old working classes in a rush for front page coverage – depending on where those ‘tits’ hang out. Whilst our old, respected journalists are having to reveal their pain in front of a country that is literally closing its doors. It’s like watching a group of innocents in straight jackets being stuffed into a water tank, the locks bolted, whilst realising there is no way of escaping.

I asked my spiritual friend what to do about Afghanistan, hold them in THE LIGHT she said. Pray/meditate/light candles, whatever it takes to send love to those desperate people.

When it was revealed that so many of the Taliban army are illiterate, that so many of the ISIS fighters are young people with nothing to live for and that blowing up people by putting on a belt full of explosives, is as commonplace as buying a bag for life at Lidl, I wept.

I am at a loss as to what to write about, think about, where to place myself in this eye of the storm. Like being on a sea-saw, if I tip too far I’ll knock the other person off and if they tip too far I’m down on the ground with the dog shit.

I cry at the pictures, and wonder whether this is what the end of the world looks like.
150 mile an hour winds in Louisiana. Hurricanes, floods, a maudlin sun that has betrayed my tomatoes. Heavy grey skies that have weighed heavy on my aubergines.
I had a voice over in London on Wednesday, it was strangely quiet. Shops boarded up and an unsettling lack of Japanese and Italian tourists. My engineer was so gentle, the other two members of the team were warm and happy to be sitting in a studio in Soho. After every take the engineer said ‘How Kind.’ I have never been in such a heart warming session.
The studio manager said he felt people were just so happy to be back working with other people. But I was afeared – forever putting my mask on, taking it off, putting it in my pocket, wearing it round my mouth. And then I lost it in China Town, to be honest I was relieved no more decision making, but then I got those creepy crawly waves of fear that I was going to get the fucking virus even though I’ve had the two jabs, live in the middle of nowhere and haven’t snogged a city boy in years.

Today the old git put the heating on. It’s AUGUST 29TH and we have the fucking central heating on.

And then I stop. Think. Remember that we have a house – cold or hot – we have a house with a roof and a garden, a cat, three bedrooms and a freezer. That we have food and a kettle and a coffee machine and a vacuum cleaner. I realise that I’m taking stock of my life because that is all I have. I have a LIFE, with all the irritating and knee trembling boring bits. I have a life. I can make decisions based on my bank account, for I actually do have a bank account.
I am not one of the dispossessed. The exiled. The afraid. I’m a 72 year old woman with a future.

And that, of course, is the cause of my low lying melancholy. I read that sympathy is judgemental but empathy is unconditional, detached love, love without demands. I am too old to sit in judgement on anybody.

I’ve forgiven all the fuckers that made my working life so difficult because I had a vested interest in being ME. For my ME didn’t match up with their ME in most situations, but I still had the will and strength to keep going. So what of families that have lost everything?

Like the Jews and the Homosexuals, like the Gypsies and blacks, who 80 odd years ago, lost it all but somehow rose to live again.

How will the Afghani women rebuild their lives under a burka? How will the sensitive, progressive poets create under an illiterate regime? Will the world stand by and watch political miscreants decide the fate of a nation?

I have decided that I HATE and I do mean HATE, the political ball throwing. I detest the uncaring, unthinking, sympathetic posturing of our leaders.

So now that I have located my source of discontent I will carry on listening, and writing. I will carry on meditating on behalf of Man Kind, for that is what’s missing Kind Men