There are many cumbersome ways to kill a man.
You can make him carry a plank of wood
to the top of a hill and nail him to it. To do this
properly you require a crowd of people
wearing sandals, a cock that crows, a cloak
to dissect, a sponge, some vinegar and one
man to hammer the nails home.
Or you can take a length of steel,
shaped and chased in a traditional way,
and attempt to pierce the metal cage he wears.
But for this you need white horses,
English trees, men with bows and arrows,
at least two flags, a prince, and a
castle to hold your banquet in.
Dispensing with nobility, you may, if the wind
allows, blow gas at him. But then you need
a mile of mud sliced through with ditches,
not to mention black boots, bomb craters,
more mud, a plague of rats, a dozen songs
and some round hats made of steel.
In an age of aeroplanes, you may fly
miles above your victim and dispose of him by
pressing one small switch. All you then
require is an ocean to separate you, two
systems of government, a nation’s scientists,
several factories, a psychopath and
land that no-one needs for several years.
These are, as I began, cumbersome ways
to kill a man. Simpler, direct, and much more neat
is to see that he is living somewhere in the middle
of the twenty first century, and leave him there.
Edwin Brock
Brock himself wrote the Twentieth Century, but I’m sure he would forgive my small adaptation.
The Twenty first century, the long awaited new Millenium that was spreading like a vast field of virgin snow waiting for the tentative footsteps of peace and prosperity to be imprinted upon it.
Now a mere eitheen years in we have a major mental health crisis, suicide on the rise and services squeezed of funds and drained of resources.
The results of political ideology and social disinterest sees the very fabric of society stretched like brittle fabric over gaping sores of poverty , loneliness, homelessness, sanctions, deportations, health and social care crises, increased crimes against the vulnerable in society and to many people asking themselves that existential question “to be or not to be…”.
“To exist or not to exist?” asks the young Student, the mother drowning in debt because their money didn’t come through for twelve weeks, a British citizen of the Windrush generation faced with deportation, loss of a job and loss of healthcare, the disabled person losing their mobility car; the list could sadly go on.
It seems that the perils of everyday life have in such an abhorrent way become toxic.
So what is this Blog about? Simply to highlight that we need more than every to support each other, help our neighbours, strangers, each in our own way to try and make sense prevail in our own corner of the universe.