Gorse

The Gorse is glorious now in the Ashdown Forest. I love that the prickly shrub has two common namers ‘Furze’ and ‘Whin’.
Driving through the mist, windows wide open, I could smell the coconutty scent coming off the whin it soothed my savage breast along with Radio 3. My breasts have been particularly savaged recently what with the Orange Lunatic and the Netanyahu brigade. I am befuddled by the mismanagement of their countries. Their leadership is arrogant and flawed and nasty.
I am the daughter of Ashkenazy Jews. Born into lack and peeling walls. Watching rats and mice skitter past our feet was a daily drudge as my musophobic mother pushed us out the door.
I was as Jewish as our neighbours, a swarthy lot of displaced Semites from Minsk, Pinsk and Omsk. A bedraggled exodus. The old ones spoke Yiddish and the young ones spoke cockney. My father was the clichéd boxer with a white singlet and dyslexia. He fought the fascists and cried into his borsht.
I was a Jew without the religion. I was a Jew with the colouring of a Yemenite and the sensibilities of survival. Of course there was anti-semitism where I grew up. The Gentiles from Poplar hated us and the bully boys from Canning Town spat insults. But you’re only as strong as your wounds and the more they attacked the greater the resilience – funny thoughts as I drove through a wonderland of whin.
‘Independence Day’ as the bloated bastard has called April 3rd, had me tutting to myself and sucking on Rescue Remedy gummy’s to keep me calm.
I can no longer watch the news in the same way, it used to be six o’clock on the BBC, then 6.30 ITV, arriving at Channel 4 at 7.0’clock. Now I barely get through Auntie Beeb before turning it off. But not before I’ve been upended by the footage of Gaza.
As a Jew I have every right to criticise the Jews in charge of Israel. As a Jew I have every right to attack other Jews who believe they are the chosen people doing Gods work. The Palestinians are not fascists from Stepney Green who deserve to be silenced. They are a broken people who are as displaced as my lot were back in the 30’s.
What kind of God facilitates such acts pf unkindness. Nobody can convince me that it’s the fault of the Arabs. The actions of Hamas last October is an outrage, not for one moment can it be justified, but it can be understood that a nation fighting for its very existence against the intransigence of a fascist government will look for vengeance.
I get accused of being a Jew hater by the very people who should know better.
Six million of my tribe were destroyed, holocaust horror, being Jewish has always been an act of rebellion, but an eye for an eye is no excuse anymore for the lies and mayhem that the Israelis are reeking on the Gazans.
Aid workers, nurses, doctors, mown down by a trained army. Broken families being bulldozed out of their homes, kicked off their land by settlers who absolutely believe that they have God on their side.
A minority of belligerent bruisers calling the shots. A shambles of skullduggery and greed deciding the fate of a shocked populace resulting in the tired old notion of nationalism.
Making countries great again, at what cost? Immigrants and exiles, being shoved around by besuited tyrants. And for what? Minerals and money. gems and gasoline.
The mist cleared and the sun shone on Duddleswell and Nutley, I drove real slow over the cattle grids. Despite the furze I felt sorry for myself being tethered to the dialysis machine three times a week, I felt miserable and hopeless, no chance of foreign trips anymore. No holidays, no hiking in the Spanish countryside, no chance of a coffee in Paris or a bowl of home made tagliatelle in Rome, and then Rodrigo’s blissful guitar concerto filled the airwaves.
Strumming its melody through the forest, the sun, the gorse, and my mood lifted. I could travel through music. I was not sleeping on rubble in Idlib, I was not fighting for my life in Lviv, I was an old Jew who had been given my life back by an exhausted NHS.
The last fourteen years have been the result of Margaret Thatchers lousy legacy, the arrival of the bloated buffoon has thrown a light on corruption but it can’t last.
Like the yellow gorse everything has its season, and soon the season of ill- will be over, the bigots will be debunked and all of us will breathe a sigh of relief.
‘Kissings out of fashion when gorse is out of blossom’ so sayeth the old Anglo Saxons so its a bloody good job that the yellow flowers of furze are always sprouting somewhere, we could do with a lot more kissing and hugging.