Well, This Is What I Think

Is “AI” a better poet than me? You decide.

Posted: January 19, 2023 in Humour, Life, Popular Culture et al
Tags: AI, chatbot, ChatGPT, consciousness, Creativity, poem, poetry, Southampton FC

The last blog I published was a sudden, unexpected little poem that occurred to me when I read online that an admired poet had died.

Here it is:

ON THE DEATH OF A POET

I confess I did not know you, or your work,

but Facebook says you have died.

A quiet family funeral, no fuss.

But your passing is noticed anyway.

When out there, in the storm of noise,

a few words that meant something

are now missing.

There is a hole there,

which may one day be filled

with wisdom.

But most likely, will not.

And honestly, I think it’s not too bad. Not great. I’ve written better. But I think it has some sympathy, and empathy. It shows respect, it’s reasonably pithy, and has what the French would call “Un Certain Regard”. Or at least they might. They might just sniff, and glare, because, you know, French.

And that would have been the end of that, until my daughter and her boyfriend (both of whom have a brilliant and active interest in psychology and it’s interface with the world, and, indeed, with philosophy) started insisting that I checkout the new AI bot that is making such headlines around the world called ChatGPT.

The Guardian wrote about the chatbot thusly:

Since its launch in November last year, ChatGPT has become an extraordinary hit. Essentially a souped-up chatbot, the AI program can churn out answers to the biggest and smallest questions in life, and draw up college essays, fictional stories, haikus, and even job application letters. It does this by drawing on what it has gleaned from a staggering amount of text on the internet, with careful guidance from human experts. Ask ChatGPT a question, as millions have in recent weeks, and it will do its best to respond – unless it knows it cannot. The answers are confident and fluently written, even if they are sometimes spectacularly wrong.

Essentially, ChatGPT is at the forefront of the development of linguistic artificial intelligence. A computer program, with some serious grunt behind it, which seeks to expand the boundaries of what artificial intelligence can achieve in answering our queries.

At the very least, Chat GPT is a fascinating diversion. With a simple sign up procedure, anyone in the world can contact the AI and ask it questions, and also provide feedback to the developers on how well you feel the AI answered your query. And it is as fun and as thought provoking as you might imagine it to be.

So I set it a simple task. Write me a poem, within a word limit, in plain verse, talking about the death of a poet. And it duly did, in about 20 seconds. This was its second attempt, after I asked it to make the language a little more modern than its first effort …

Here it is:

DEATH OF A POET

A poet has passed, their voice silenced,

Their pen now laid to rest.

Their words, a lasting legacy,

A treasure we possess.

We grieve their loss, a light now gone,

A mind that once created.

Their poetry, forever etched,

In memories we’ll forever treasure, fate.

Their heart, once filled with feeling,

Now beats no more, in silent sleep.

But in the lines they wrote, so revealing,

Their spirit, forever, we’ll keep.

Though they may be gone, their words remain,

A testament to love and pain.

Well.

What do you think?

Well what I think is that it’s banal and cliched; it’s interesting in that it basically has nailed the brief, but it’s somehow more than a bit disappointing. To my eyes, at least. It feels … clumsy. And it is: it’s hackneyed.

What it lacks, to my eyes, is any real cleverness or insight. It is, in effect, a collection of “expected” phrases trolled out one after another. But then, if one thinks about it deeply, what else could it really be? Because it is, by its very nature, a regurgitation. Of everything the AI can find that might possibly be relevant, and reformed into an answer in a matter of seconds.

But despite that, and very frankly, I think it’s as least as good as some of the doggerel one reads on the many Facebook (and elsewhere) poetry groups. (All the content of which also goes towards the stuff ChatGPT is reading, analysing and … regurgitating … of course.)

And that, it seems to me, is the problem with AI … so far.

It is the ultimate example of that famous IT aphorism, GIGO. Garbage In, Garbage Out. For it to truly transform the world in the way that is being so breathlessly promoted in the media, what is needed is an AI with the wit, and discretion, and passion of the human mind to take everything that is known and then produce an outcome which makes the type of intuitive leap that the human mind can make, and sometimes when it least expects to.

There were hundreds of contemporary Beethoven-like composers writing at the same time as the maestro, but only one – the real deal – came up with Ode to Joy.

AI has no subconscious. And it is not discriminating enough.

It is, instead, utterly conscious: too conscious, if you like. Too well informed. It is blindly, eagerly conscious of everything ever written, but without a human-quality filter.

And despite all those students who are theoretically trying to use it to deliver their essays at college, ironically, that is its core weakness.

It won’t provide true insight, or leaps of perception.

For now, at least, anyway.

And thank heavens for that, or this poet would be out of a job.

Feeling a hint of unease, I then asked ChatGPT if Southampton FC would survive in the English Premier League this year, from our current position of plumb last. Bottom.

It very politely told me (after a rather longer wait, interestingly) that there’s a chance they will, because they’ve got a long history of doing well, and they’re a good club. Hmmm.

But it was very sorry, it really couldn’t predict the future, especially in sports, with so many variables, and so on.

I detected a smirk. It could almost have said “Hang in there, there’s a chance. Where there’s life, there’s hope.” but didn’t.

It’s the hope that kills ya, after all. I wondered if it understands that, and it was just teasing me.

Honestly, it felt like my “I’d like to help you, Dave, but I just can’t do that.” moment. And I shivered slightly.

On the death of a poet

Posted: January 15, 2023 in Life, Popular Culture et al
Tags: Creativity, poem, poet, poetry, writing

I confess I did not know you, or your work,

but Facebook says you have died.

A quiet family funeral, no fuss.

But your passing is noticed anyway.

When out there, in the storm of noise,

a few words that meant something

are now missing.

There is a hole there,

which may one day be filled

with wisdom.

But most likely, will not.

Cry, My Beloved Party

Posted: October 13, 2022 in Political musings
Tags: Apartheid, Britain, Liberal Democrats, Liberalism, Liberals, Nuclear weapons, policy development, political policy, politics

For many of us, of a certain age, the modern Liberal Democrats are in many ways unrecognisable from the radical, campaigning Liberal Party of our youth.

We, who grew up forged in the fires of the Young Liberals and the Union of Liberal Students, at the heights of titanic struggles against apartheid, nuclear weapons such as Cruise missiles, Nazi groups active in our major cities and the like, now look on confused and regretful as we seem to have become a polite and almost entirely middle-class debating society, meandering our way through worthy and no doubt well-meaning policy development, but with little to recommend us and seize the public’s imagination, nor, it seems, to excite the majority of our membership.

The EU. An idea whose time has come again.

A classic example was the attitude of our party grandees, who (with the party’s support marooned at the time at 6-8%, so it seems hard to imagine who they thought we were going to offend), failed to lift high the torch for an unambiguous commitment to Rejoin the EU.

This would have been a commitment which would have, at a stroke, differentiated us from both Labour and the Tories, kept the faith with our bedrock supporters, (and many who have drifted from us from time to time, but not entirely left us behind), and, as is now clear, would have unambiguously positioned us to benefit most from the rapid and completely predictable public disenchantment with Brexit.

Instead, we presented (and we continue to present) mealy-mouthed waffle about ‘pursuing the closest possible relationship with the EU’, ignoring the obvious fact that the closest possible relationship, as is clearly enshrined in party policy, by the way, would simply be to ask the British people if they’d now like to Rejoin.

Bang banga boom boom – you’re dead.

Another, more recent example, is our seeming determination to actually maintain or even increase our reliance on nuclear weapons, in direct contradiction to decades of informed scepticism about their worth, and at the very moment that the war in Ukraine surely demonstrates that they are an unusable and irrelevant defence mechanism, redolent of a neo-colonial machismo that bears no resemblance to the position and role of modern Britain.

At the very least, we need a serious, informed debate that doesn’t not rely on knee-jerk machismo, but rather a serious-minded review of all of Britain’s defence options, how to get nuclear disarmament talks re-started, and how to engage with those countries with whom we disagree profoundly, short of threatening to blow each other off the map.

Wither Scotland?

Our passionately presented commitment to Union between the component parts of Great Britain is yet another example of policy inertia.

Admittedly there is little doubt that the party in Scotland is emphatically unionist, (whilst the public are clearly not), which is the Scots party’s absolute right, of course, but the rest of the party simply falls meekly into line.

Indeed, seeking to debate our unionist preference is to light the blue touchpaper on howls of protest for those who argue that it is none of the business of English, Welsh, Northern Irish and international members what happens with Scotland, but only a matter for the Scots party, despite the very obvious fact that with an entwined political culture and economy it most obviously is a legitimate matter for all to consider.

This apparently unshakeable unionist commitment from the party should at least be questioned – especially in the party that championed the very concept of devolution when no-one else was interested, and which, within the context of the EU, should have no fear of a free association of independent nations who have taken upon themselves the right and responsibilities of self-government. It is said in response that we support a Federal Britain, which might indeed be a smart way through the morass, but where do we see this alternative presented with vim, vigour and with much to recommend it to break the “Yes/No” deadlock on independence?

Why are we here?

I put it to you: if we are morphing, in effect, into nothing more than a sort of offend no-one “Tory lite” organisation, then what earthly reason is there for Tory voters to switch to us, when they have a successful and persistent Tory Party in power which they can simply keep voting for?

As the incomparable Tony Benn once said to me, (not that I have always agreed with him, but he had some things very right), “Stephen, there’s no point us pretending to be bastards, because if the public want the bastards in they’ll vote for the real ones, because they know we’re not really bastards, we’re just pretending.”

I had cause to remember that comment after we were savaged for our supine failure to make the Coalition with Cameron work for ordinary folk.

A party in Government which cheerfully discarded treasured policy positions to get along peacefully with its larger partner was always going to be seen as irrelevant and weak, and duly was.

Do we never learn? We must be vibrant, or disappear.

The Liberal radicalism of my youth kept our parliamentary party on its toes, and culminated in Charles Kennedy’s principled and impressive opposition to the Iraq war. That radicalism saw us reach a modern high-water mark for the party in terms of electoral success, just as our earlier opposition to apartheid and cruise missiles saw us become increasingly relevant (and talked about) during the Steel and Ashdown eras.

There was always disagreement – sometimes trenchant disagreement – between the party’s leadership, some of the hierarchy, and our more radical activist members, but the disagreement was acknowledged, and managed, and frequently more radical ideas weaved their way into otherwise somewhat anodyne policy. We weren’t afraid of debate – we lived for it.

This passion for ideas gave us a keener cutting edge, and, for example, bred a generation of community campaigners who truly believed that governing was actually about the welfare of the governed, not those in power, and that structures and procedures had to be put in place to ensure that the levers of power were increasingly put in ordinary folk’s hands, whether in the workplace, in local Government, in planning, or, indeed, yet more broadly. When we cried “Power to the People”, we actually meant it.

So is it actually all over, orange rover?

Unlike some, I now fear that the Party cannot be dragged back to its earlier roots. We have simply lost too many good members to tiredness, premature death, (vale, Simon Titley), cynicism, the other attractions of life, and also to other parties, especially Labour and the Greens, and to a lesser extent the nationalists.

Our main appeal – our raison d’etre – now seems to have collapsed to “We are not the others” … and fair enough, we aren’t, and we know what’s wrong with them … but is apparently not backed up with any successful attempt to define what a resurgent Liberalism could mean for the public, and for the success of the country.

Our internationalism is muted, our industrial policy is never heard, (disgracefully, we did not full-throatily support the rail workers when Labour deserted them), our passion for electoral reform as part of a wider rearrangement of Britain’s political structure seems to have degenerated into little more than whining “but First Past the Post is so jolly unfair to us”, no-one turns to us for breakthrough thinking on modern policy conundrums, (they always used to – we were a constant ferment of new ideas), we are not leading the debate on how to preserve and enhance a national health system become ever more unwieldy and expensive as waiting periods expand exponentially and the seriously ill wait in vain for an ambulance, and whilst I absolutely applaud the party’s commitment to cleaning up Britain’s waterways, is it part of a comprehensive and convincing collection of policies, which the public can articulate when they consider who to vote for, unambiguously demanding ecological sustainability and combating climate change? Or have we now meekly conceded that ground in the public’s mind to the Greens?

Some people will read this article and nod sadly in agreement. Others will rail angrily, (willfully in denial, in my opinion), missing the point that we are unquestionably a pale orange shadow of what we used to be.

Ironically, they will quote recent political successes at me as evidence that things are going well, and insist we need to give it time, we are carving out the centre ground, the electoral calculation may swing our way, and so on and so forth.

But if all that were true, then I ask you in all humility, what would a Government with the Liberal Democrats in it actually do that would be distinctively Liberal, democratic, radical, and courageous?

Have we not assumed a mantle of managerial incrementalism so intrinsically unimaginative and lacking in all boldness, so that if someone handed us the levers of power we would do perilously little with them, and merely nibble around the edges of a system which inexorably seems to create a Britain that is inexorably weaker, less safe, dirtier, unhealthier and less progressive than it was when we led the charge for new ideas?

There was a time, remember, when we marched, at Jo Grimond’s urging, towards the sound of gunfire.

Wave a pop gun at us now and I think we’d run away.

Reflections – not on a monarch – but on her people.

Posted: September 17, 2022 in Political musings, Popular Culture et al
Tags: Britain, funeral, Future of Britain, Kind Charles, London, politics, Queen Elizabeth, Queen's funeral, UK

The queue to file past the Queen’s coffin reaches five miles

What do the current scenes in London and elsewhere tell us
about the state of modern Britain?

Like most of the world, and as a Briton transplanted to the other side of the planet, I have watched on with a mixture of admiration, sympathy, bemusement, concern and some surprise at the British public’s unheralded response to the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

The death of the nonagenarian Queen, which surely should have been expected at some point soon, has produced an outpouring of largely respectful mourning the like of which no modern nation has surely ever seen. As we write, the queue to file past her coffin stretches for up to 24 hours of wet and cold endurance. And still they come.

The very intense public reaction began as soon as rumours of the Queen’s last illness started to spread, with people nervously parsing the fact that BBC presenters were already dressed in black and wearing black tie before any announcement from the Palace, and has been supported, if not driven, by seemingly wall-to-wall 24-hour coverage of the Queen’s life and death on all main media channels.

Trade Unions and political parties have cancelled their Autumnal gatherings, a week’s football was delayed, (but not racing, which the Queen loved, it should be noted), and a myriad of other events small or large have been postponed or simply closed down.

The new King has toured every corner of the British Isles for services of commemoration, attended or abetted by other members of “The Firm”, (as the Royal family is known), receiving a genuinely warm and sympathetic reception, (it seems to this correspondent at least), wherever he has gone.

A very few voices of dissent have been swiftly silenced or marginalised – too swiftly, in the case of one policeman, who has been reprimanded for arresting a lawyer carrying a blank sheet of paper, and thereby sparking a helpful debate about the legitimate limits to free speech and policing of public order.

As modern argot would have it … ‘scenes’.

But at some point, it behoves anyone who cares about the health of society and the body politic to ask, sotto voce, whether such an overwhelming response to someone dying – even someone as rarefied and admired as a 96 year old, 70-year monarch – is actually, somehow, slightly concerning. And even, perish the thought, slightly ‘naff’. Watching some people prostrating themselves on the floor next to the coffin has made for less than comfortable viewing.

However, let us first establish a principle. It is entirely up to people to decide for themselves how to grieve, and not for anyone else to dictate it to them.

And, perhaps equally importantly, grief is a complex emotional reaction which is not reserved for the death of close relatives.

We grieve many things, and the passing of an era surely falls into that category, as well as the passing of the individual who, for many, epitomised that era and was a reliable and imperturbable constant at the heart of it.

The departure of the Queen leaves, we are sure, many people feeling like the constancies of their youth are now emphatically over, and that the future seems now just a little bit more uncertain – a less well-understood and as yet dimly-perceived landscape with one of its most dominant and long-lasting features removed, for ever.

So let us assert this unequivocally and boldly: if people want to turn out for the funeral – a million visitors are expected in central London for the event itself – well, that’s entirely up to them.

One might also ask, though, through simultaneously and quietly murmuring lips, whether the Queen herself might have been slightly discomforted by the scale of the mourning. She was someone who was known to be somewhat sceptical of too much pomp and ceremony, whilst she understood its unique role in British society, and she submitted uncomplainingly to the pressures on her personally.

Although she was apparently very involved in the planning of her own celebration of her life, one nevertheless suspects she might have been somewhat bemused by how utterly the event has consumed British society.

The Queen was never one for public demonstrations of emotion, after all. Her visible restraint after the premature death of her beloved father, and after the death of her long-standing consort Prince Philip, was notable. Many will also recall that she had to be persuaded to involve herself outside the gates of Buck House when Princess Diana died. That was the right decision, but it did not come easily to her.

For one who lived her life in the public eye, she was a remarkably private person.

Not for nothing was the Scottish fastness of the Balmoral estate her favourite place on the planet.

A place where she could live away from the public gaze, and metaphorically let her hair down, wandering or driving the moors with her much-loved dogs and horses.

Accepting, then, that there is no right or wrong way to “do” national mourning, it seems – to our eyes at least – that with its unprecedented outpouring of grief, Britain is also collectively demonstrating an attack of anxiety, which few commentators seem to have the wit or courage to acknowledge.

An anxiety which is entirely reasonable, and predictable.

Recent years have seen many substantial changes and challenges for the British, after all.

A testing time

Covid hit Britain harder than any other comparable country with the exception of the USA. Many, many families lost loved ones, or know of families who did. Not since the Spanish flu epidemic more than a century before has the country faced such a mortal health crisis.

The country has also experienced political and economic upheaval of unprecedented proportion with the controversial and divisive Brexit decision to leave the EU, the consequences or opportunities of which (depending on your point of view) are still being worked through, but unquestionably with significant disruption to travel, shopping, employment, prices and more.

Indeed, the overall economic situation, it is generally agreed, is somewhat dire, with rampant inflation and a cost of living crisis that is seeing Britain’s less well off hit extremely hard.

The rambunctious former Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, a figure of as much scorn and mistrust as he was one of admiration, is gone, (at least for now), finally toppled by his own party.

The new Prime Minister, Liz Truss, is something of an unknown quantity, known hitherto mostly for gaffes and sillinesses, notable mainly for being considered, by electing Tory party members, as the ‘best of a bad bunch’.

The fact that obviously better candidates fell by the wayside because they failed to secure enough support from their fellow MPs before even being submitted to the party’s judgement makes Truss’s accession yet more tricky.

The country is at war with Russia – albeit via its proxy combatant Ukraine – and whatever one feels about that situation, (we are firmly on Ukraine’s side and glad to see the West supporting them), it is nevertheless a worrying time, and the country being threatened directly by an increasingly bellicose Vladimir Putin and his apparatchiks does nothing to calm the nerves.

Ecologically the country is a mess, with millions of tons of raw sewage being pumped into its rivers from overwhelmed water infrastructure.

It’s inner cities are very obviously dirty and grimy, in a poor state of repair, and its road and rail network, and airlines, are creaking alarmingly.

Many of its major cities (and some smaller ones) have effectively declared their centres as ‘no go areas’ at night, with people vocally afraid to risk the street violence and robbery which has become more commonplace with every passing year. Fatal stabbings, in particular, were in 2019 at their highest since records began in 1946.

And the jewel of the British social crown, the National Health Service, is labouring to address the health needs of a 21st century nation with a model forged in the 1940s, which seemingly endless organisational tinkering never seem to adequately address. Ambulances which are supposed to arrive for urgent cases in 11 minutes are now routinely taking over 80. As one often hears people say, “but nothing ever seems to get done“.

Large scale immigration during the EU years, especially from Eastern Europe, sees the native population restless and concerned, despite the very obvious fact that immigration supports a vibrant economy and brings skills to the country that it historically does a poor job of developing itself.

In modern Britain your new plumber, plasterer or brickie is now as likely to come from Gdansk, Riga or Belgrade as they are to hail from Manchester, Swansea or Pontefract. People are happy to enjoy the benefits of an expanded workforce, but anxious about the relocation costs incurred by the social support system as people settle, and instinctively discomforted by hearing a new polyglot of languages as they walk down the High Street.

The very Union itself, especially as regards Scotland, seems on very shaky ground. It would be a brave punter who would bet against Scotland becoming independent in the near-to-medium term, and very few people have any idea what that new model of governance would look like in practice.

Last, but by no means least, the now King Charles III is an unknown quantity, at least in his new role. Will he reach the same heights of service and unflappable courtesy as his mother did? The British people will surely give him every chance, as his reception in the last week has betokened. But he is a very different character to Elizabeth, and despite his long apprenticeship for the role, his accession raises its own questions around continuity and reliability.

And so on, and so forth.

There’s simply been a lot for Britain to adjust to, in the last decade or so. And now, layered onto many other changes, this visible and sad change at the very pinnacle of society. The deeply felt loss of a woman who seemed to constantly and effortlessly send out a calming mixture of affability and stern adherence to duty, under whose stewardship it was surely felt that no matter what else changed, her reliably maternal gaze would smooth troubled waters and help find the country a route through to amicable solutions.

So our reflection on the unprecedented scale of mourning which we have been witnessing is that the Queen has, with her passing, suddenly and sadly become a cipher for the entire basket of anxieties that the British public feel – consciously and unconsciously – and that they are flocking to witness her final journey not just out of deep respect, but also to express a deep sense of unease about the future, which they might have some difficulty articulating, but which they feel nevertheless.

And so be it. No great harm is done by the wearing out of some shoe leather, the drip of rain down exposed necks, or the permanently tuned TV channel. And if the act of mourning assuages both grief and anxiety, as well as expressing deep respect for a life well lived, (and perhaps in contrast to so many others that could be mentioned), then all to the good. But then what?

From next week: the Challenge

The issues Britain faces mean that its leaders – and people – will need to move on rapidly, post funeral, to the business of repairing the increasingly obvious gaps in the social fabric. The business of mourning needs to be swapped for business as usual – and improved business as usual – with some alacrity.

Because to heal society, it’s not enough to walk, head bowed, next to one’s brothers and sisters.

One needs to be actively and intently involved in securing their well-being when they have left the streets and the halls, and returned to their homes and workplaces.

Britons need to be working, with the determination which the Queen undoubtedly embodied, for a better deal for everyone.

Humble or exalted, young and old, from wherever in the scept’red isle they hail from or from overseas, black or white, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu or other, straight, gay, male, female, transgender and gender fluid – a nation for all, truly united in its determination to create a new Jerusalem in its green and pleasant land.

What Britain is now crying out for is an outburst of hope and effort from a people conjoined by what they agree on, and courteously debating that which they do not.

Eschewing cynicism and embracing ‘possibility thinking’.

A positive, active people dedicated to building a better Britain.

Because that dedication, above all, would be something which the Queen, God rest her remarkable soul, would generously applaud.

That is the celebration which Her Majesty’s life truly deserves.

‘-30-‘ … what does it mean?

Posted: March 24, 2022 in Life, Political musings
Tags: -30-, Ernie Pyle, etymology, journalism, Kyiv, language, Oksana Baulina, Russia, typesetting, Ukraine, war, words

I have been following an interesting online discussion about use of -30- at the end of an obituary for a newspaper colleague.

-30- has been traditionally used by journalists to indicate the end of a story or article that is submitted for editing and typesetting.

19th century railway telegraphic code indicated -30- as code for “No more – the end”.

A poignant example appeared in a sketch by famed WWII cartoonist Bill Mauldin who, in paying tribute to equally famed WWII battle correspondent Ernie Pyle just killed in action in the Pacific War by a Japanese sniper, simply drew an old-style correspondent’s typewriter with a half-rolled sheet of paper that showed simply

“Ernie Pyle
-30- “.

This raises the question of why the number 30 was chosen by 19th century telegraphers to represent “the end”. Folk etymology has it that it may have been a joking reference to the Biblical Book of John 19:30, which, in the popular King James Version, appears as: “30 When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.”

Ironic timing, indeed as we read today that a prominent and highly-regarded Russian journalist has been killed during shelling by Russian forces in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv.

Oksana Baulina had been reporting from Kyiv and the western city of Lviv for the courageous Russian investigative website The Insider, the outlet said in a statement. She died while filming damage in the city’s Podil district, it added.

Baulina previously worked for Russian opposition hero Alexei Navalny’s anti-corruption foundation, and had left Russia.

Last year the foundation was outrageously made illegal and branded extremist by the authorities, forcing many of its staff to flee abroad.

One other person was killed and two others injured in the shelling, the Insider said.

Baulina had previously sent several reports from Kyiv and the western Ukrainian city of Lviv. The publication expressed its “deepest condolences” to the reporter’s family and friends.

The debt we owe brave journalists reporting the ongoing massacre of innocents in #Ukraine is massive.

So far Baulina is one of five journalists known to have been killed in a month of war.

In early March Yevhenii Sakun, a camera operator for Ukrainian TV channel LIVE who also worked for the Spanish news agency EFE, was killed during shelling of the TV transmission tower in Kyiv.

Two weeks later US journalist and filmmaker Brent Renaud, 50, was shot dead as he was filming in the town of Irpin outside Kyiv.

And two days later two Fox News journalists – cameraman Pierre Zakrzewski, 55, and Oleksandra Kuvshinova, 24 – were killed when their vehicle was struck by incoming fire on the outskirts of Kyiv.

-30-

A DETERMINED WOMAN – an original short story

Posted: March 22, 2022 in Humour, Life
Tags: biography, books and writing, creative writing, Creativity, family, family histories, short story, Wales, writing

My mother’s character was forged early, when she left school at 14 and somehow forgot to tell her parents.

Rather than attend Mrs Llewellyn’s Academy for Young Ladies she spent her days tramping the black hills above Swansea for a view over the shining bay, when the rain relented long enough to do so, or down at the docks watching fishing boats unloading their catch. Sometimes she would patrol the centre of the town, admiring the new “flapper” dresses in the shop windows.

She figured she wasn’t learning anything that would be any help in life’s coming endeavours. She had no interest in discovering how to comport herself to good effect at a middle-class cocktail party full of silly boys who laughed too loud and coughed over their Craven As, and even less enthusiasm for delving into the mysteries of creating a Crème brûlée for some future husband.

She did not make a fuss, just quietly absented herself. And as her father kept paying the fees, so no one from the Academy bothered Mr Reynolds as to why Betty’s chair was empty. Such an indiscrete enquiry would have been considered infra dig. Her wayward wanderings were only discovered when her mother was walking home clutching another bottle of nerve tonic after one of her regular visits to a local physician who never hesitated to relieve her of a shilling for needless consultations, and she happened to discover Betty skipping stones on Cwmdonkin Reservoir.

The confrontation with her father over her behaviour lasted a little over ten minutes. “I am not going back, and you can’t make me.” She pursed her lips with obdurate certainty. Her father looked at her resignedly. He had never thought it worthwhile educating the girl anyway, and had only reluctantly agreed to satisfy his wife, who had some notion that it was the modern thing to do. “You can’t just moon around doing nothing,” he argued. “I won’t,” she said. “I’ll come work in the shop.”

The fishmonger looked at her balefully – he enjoyed escaping to the little shop in Sketty every day, without the responsibilities of dealing with the females in his family for a few hours. And he knew his wife would play merry hell over the thought of the girl standing behind the counter. On the other hand, he knew the girl could be trusted, and was quick-witted. “I can’t pay you much,” he said, doubtfully. “Whatever you can manage,” she replied, smiling. And so it was done.

She took to the work immediately. Her peaceable manner quieted her worrying father and went down well with customers. She seemed to have a natural instinct for those who could be trusted to take some food “on tic” till next payday, and very rarely got that judgement wrong. The gratitude of those customers struggling to survive what they were now calling The Great Depression was palpable. Her father even took to enjoying a quiet pint of a lunchtime at The Vivian on Gower Road, where he would catch up with old comrades from the trenches who, like him, had somehow survived the carnage at Ypres. The lick of gas had left him perennially short-breathed, but some had got it worse. Billy had been blinded, after all. They would talk, and sometimes a runner would take half-a-crown to the local bookie, but only when he knew the business could stand it.

Back at the shop, Betty bobbed and weaved, enjoying the responsibility, and became adept at totting up lists of figures on a scrap of paper, and blindingly quickly. It was a skill that never left her, at least until her mind failed into her dotage, and a useful talent which she eventually passed to me. To this day I surprise work colleagues and my own family with my capacity to glance at a column of figures and deliver an approximation of the total in moments, accurate to within a few pennies at least. Give me a pencil and paper and I’ll give you the exactly right answer in seconds. “Thank the fish,” I sometimes grin, obscurantly.

She married, and moved. But my father died of a massive coronary when I was just two, worn out by six years on destroyers in the second war, ultimately the victim of too many fags and one too many scotches. There wasn’t any money, and she adapted to life as an impoverished single mother with the same resolute and unfussed purpose that she applied to all the other areas of her life. Stoicism was her watchword. She just got on, and did.

Despite the pressure cooker existence of being a single mother with a precocious only child, she and I rarely argued, mostly because early on I worked out it was a pointless exercise.

Once her mind was made up, it was unmade so rarely as to be a news event, and in turn her mulish stubbornness had been passed down to me.

We took it in turns to ignore the adopted position of the other, always moving the conversation onto safer ground when argument loomed. It was, thus, an unproductive relationship by modern standards, but a peaceful one. Where today parents and children would be urged to “have it out” and “find common ground”, we simply left patches of emotional turf unexplored.

She rarely cracked the whip, except when I reached the fringes of adulthood, and then only ever over the time I was due home, as she used to say she had enough to worry about without lying in bed concerned I had crashed the Triumph Herald on the way back from the pub.

Eleven meant eleven. The cold stare I received if I rolled the little white car down the drive at ten past the hour was too high a price for an extra ten minutes of freedom.

And if I was ever going out for a drink she would warn me, as if by rote, against drinking scotch. “It doesn’t agree with the men in our family,” she would intone solemnly. “You do as you like, boy, but I tell you I always knew when your father came back from the pub if he’d been drinking whisky, just by the look on his face. It doesn’t agree with our men.”

She was right. It didn’t. And much as I love a peaty, oaky single malt, to this day I always ration myself to one or two at most. I can guzzle a crisp bottle of Chardonnay, smash down a vodka or three, and above all drown myself in good, chewy bitter ale with the best of them. But if I drink too much scotch, my head is thicker than usual, and my mood next day is always one of black despair. She knew things.

She ignored my choice of women, figuring it was none of her business, and only tut-tutted mildly at my occasional business misadventures. “Better to give it a go,” was her placid judgement.

There was really only one disagreement that echoed down the years between Betty and me.

It grew from what she regarded as her encyclopaedic knowledge of fish, and a defiant desire on my part to win one argument – just one – on her home territory.

It began one Christmas, when we received our customary creaking crate of fresh fish delivered to our local railway station from Uncle Ken, her brother, who still worked his stand on the docks in Swansea, buying the catch wholesale and shipping it to hotels all over the country in rough hewn planks packed with newspaper and ice.

This was long before the days of refrigerated transport, of course. By the time the crate arrived it would always be showing signs of melting, and smelling strongly. But if the railways managed to get it to us overnight, the fish inside was still fresh enough to add a touch of luxury to our otherwise somewhat bare Christmas feasts. Usually a cod, from Iceland, maybe a ling or two from down Cornwall way, perhaps some langoustines from Scotland or Brittany, and always a sea trout – or sewin as the Welsh call it – Salmo trutta cambricus – because that was her special favourite. Brown trout that had escaped the river for the open sea, and were richer and deeper in colour and flavour as a result.

She would nestle the gleaming silvery fish lovingly in her hands, often three or four pounds in weight, and show me that the mouth of the sea trout is slightly longer than the salmon, reaching behind the line of the eye. At that time of year they often turned up in nets off the North Wales coast, or were caught on lines as they returned to their home river to spawn. She would explain how despite its pink flesh, the real difference between salmon and sea trout is in the taste. “It feeds like a salmon on whatever the ocean has to offer – often small crabs and things – it looks likes salmon, but it will always taste like a trout.”

She would smile in delight. “It always tastes of the river, wherever it’s been.”

The white fish she would bake in a pie with leeks and a potato and cheese crust. Langoustines would be saved for a Boxing Day party with the Sedwells from next door, made merry by a naughty second glass of sherry before lunch, and then helped along with the luxury of a bottle of Mateus Rosé as we cracked the shells, praying our thanks for Ken’s generosity, and afterwards there was always an obligatory game of Pontoon, but for matches only, as Betty didn’t hold with gambling.

But the sewin was always carefully sliced into neat parcels wrapped in greaseproof paper, carefully husbanded to provide her with a few meals, and piece by piece in the coming few days a fillet would be braised on the stovetop for her private lunch, always served with impossibly thinly sliced but thickly buttered Hovis bread. She would eat it alone, at the little lino-topped kitchen table, chewing slowly, with a dreamy, faraway look in her eyes.

Our disagreement came when one year Ken dispatched some skate in the crate.

“Ugh”, she muttered. “Skate. Why on earth would he send us skate?”

I looked at the curious ՙwings’ of fish lying sodden against a background of racing results and a weather report for the Swansea Valley. They were about the size of my spread hand, thicker at the top than the bottom, with curious ridges running the length of the fillets.

“What is it?” I asked, intrigued.

Her lip curled ever so slightly contemptuously. Skate, she opined, was not something that should ever be seen at a polite table. “They’re ’orrible ugly buggers, for one” she said, explaining how the stingray-like fish sometimes came up in the deep nets on the edge of the continental shelf. “Good for cat food, is all. You have to throw most of the fish away, and they stink of ammonium sometimes, too. All you get are these little bits.” She gestured at the wings with distaste. “Why on earth would he send us this? ’Spect he couldn’t sell it anywhere else.”

Something about her untypical annoyance encouraged a little devilment in me. “We should cook it though, yeah?” I pointed to the clock. “It’s near lunchtime, anyway. How bad can it be, eh? It’s a meal.”

She looked irritated. “The Sedwell’s cat can have it. I wouldn’t thank you for it.”

I persisted. “That’s a waste, Mam. ‘Waste not, want not’ you’re always saying. We should give it a go. How do you cook it, then?”

She picked up the little parcel and thrust it at me. “Stick it in a pan and fry it up with a bit of fat if you must. But I don’t want any.” She scowled.

I chuckled and grabbed an old pan and melted a knob of butter in it. She watched my out of the corner of her eye, and I whistled a few notes, pretending I didn’t know she was watching. I used the Welsh Shir Gȃr from Camarthenshire, as she had treated herself to a pat because it was Christmas, although I found it far too salty.

“You make sure you get it cooked,” she grumbled, “got to be cooked right through.” Despite herself, she glanced at the pan. “See that pink bit? You don’t want that. Hasn’t been bled proper.” And she got the butter knife and carved a small portion off one of the fillets and threw it away, murmuring “Skate” to herself disapprovingly as she did.

The wings browned nicely, and when the fillets were flipped so the ridges were pan side down, that side crisped agreeably, too, although I hadn’t floured them. I flipped a little butter over them, and turned them out onto a plate.

“Mum, “ I urged with my first mouthful, “this is delicious. Really. Try a piece.”

When pressed, she accepted the tiniest morsel of milky-white flesh from me on a fork, and daintily popped it in her mouth. Then turned away, and mumbled “Skate” again, making a disapproving clucking noise. Nothing I could say would induce her to try any more, although I was ploughing through the delicately flavoured flesh at a rate of knots. “You enjoy it, boy”, she said, “if you like it. But it’s not for me. No, thank you very much.”

And no matter how I pushed her for why she didn’t like it, nothing else was forthcoming. Which was her all over, truth be told.

As the years past, and the humble skate metamorphosed into the poisson du jour for so many food experts and critics, her implacable opinion never wavered. I sat her down once in front of a television and made her watch some famous chef produce a clutch of wings in brown butter, with some deep-green baby beans. A picture on a plate. “Not for me,” she insisted, with a steely tone. And changed the subject.

Towards the end, her mind went walkabout. She would confuse me with my father, grumbling that I hadn’t fixed the side gate yet. She would worry who was minding the shop she had stopped working in 70 years earlier.

One day, the nurse said she was being “difficult”, and would I mind popping in to calm her? And as I made my way into her room, she was banging a fork on her tray, clearly agitated.

“Skate!” she cried at me when she saw me come in. “Skate! Not for me boy, you can take this away. Give it to the cat.” And she pushed the table towards the end of her bed on its roller feet, glaring at me.

She died the next day. 93.

Just sat up in bed, apparently, insisting it was time for a nice cup of tea, then fell backward again, and that was it.

She was a determined woman, my mother, who ate a lot of fish.

But not skate.

No, thank you very much.

Copyright Stephen Yolland, 2020

Laver Bread – celebrating a true Welsh delicacy

Posted: March 22, 2022 in Life, Popular Culture et al
Tags: breakfast, Captain Cook, culture, dillisk, Dulse, laver bread, laverbread, New South Wales, seaweed, Wales, Welsh food

As we celebrate cultural diversity, we sometimes fail to recognise the unique cultures that go to make up Great Britain. Everyone always talks about the English, of course – which is their reward for conquering their near neighbours, I guess – but the Scots, the Irish and the Welsh are actually quite separate cultures, and each with their own distinct cuisine, for example.

The three Celtic or Gaelic nations (depending on which part of them you’re in) were always historically much poorer than the dominant English. So many of their peoples lived off the land, at least in part, for centuries, and still do, at least to some extent.

For example, these three countries all have a tradition of eating seaweed, gathered from their shorelines. Everyone knows that Asian countries have seaweed as a part of their staple diet, but very few know that some northern European people do, too. And good on ’em: seaweed is highly nutritious: a natural superfood that is packed with vitamins and minerals. It is high in iodine, prebiotic fibre, antioxidants and plant protein. Indeed, for the vegans amongst you, it is one of the only viable vegetable sources of vitamin B12 – and it comes at a relatively little cost to the environment, when harvested sustainably. It can be eaten raw, boiled or stewed, or dried and added to many other foods as a condiment.

Many different types of seaweed can be eaten, although Atlantic Dulse (also known as dillisk, in Ireland) is the commonest in the Glamorgan and Prembrokeshire areas where my family are from.

Fresh dulse resembles a leafy, red lettuce.
Photo: Stephen Ward/Oregon State University

If you are of Welsh descent, like me, then you’ll know and love your seaweed as an anthracite black, dense, strongly flavoured puree, called Laverbread or bara lafwr in Welsh.

It tastes something like a cross between olives and oysters and is traditionally eaten fried in a pan with salted bacon and cockles (a small shellfish similar to an Australian ‘pipi’) at breakfast-time.

It’s also eaten cold as a salad with lamb or mutton and is a wonderful and nutritious snack when spooned onto hot buttered toast.

Once freely available from docks and local markets, it’s now mainly sold in tins, but not, sadly, in my adopted home of Australia, although one can buy dried versions to add to soups, meats and teas.

Laverbread and Australia do have one very significant connection, however.

At 11.07am on 28 April 1770 Captain James Cook was midway through his cockles and laverbread breakfast when he ‘discovered’ Australia for the crown. Likening the coastline of the new found land to that of South Wales, and influenced by his breakfast, no doubt, Cook imaginatively called the area ‘New South Wales’.

A time.

Image — Posted: February 7, 2021 in Life
Tags: ageing, Creativity, Life, poem, poetry

What the hell just happened? Chickens came home to roost.

Posted: January 7, 2021 in Political musings
Tags: congress, coup, facts, Fake News, media, Republicans, riot, Trump, unreason

What just happened? Nothing more nor less than the inevitable outworking of what started five years ago, at the Republican primaries before the last election.

American “democracy”, such as it is, allowed Trump – a convicted wrongdoer who does not believe in democracy to begin with, except insofar as it can advance him personally – to hijack the Republican primary process with pure, mindless populism fuelled by constant lies, conspiracy theories and nonsense.

He appealed to the basest instincts of those who felt disenfranchised by the political elite in Washington and elsewhere, which was epitomised in the 2016 general election by an infinitely more qualified and stronger candidate, Hillary Clinton. No lie was too great, no untruth beneath him and his enablers, many of whom sat in the House and the Senate. In due course, the electoral college, an antiquated institution long past its use by date for protecting the interests of smaller states, then delivered him an underserved and bogus victory. (As far right Republican Rand Paul said today, Republicans need to defend the electoral college because “otherwise Conservatives will never win a Presidential election again”.) There was hardly a peep of protest.

Once the fix was in and Trump had lied and cheated his way to power – with the enthusiastic social media support of America’s most pressing enemy, the Russians – he then proceeded to continue to poison the body politics with at least 20,000 proven lies to the American public over four years.

He exhibited the same ruthless obsession with bare-faced lying in the run up to the 2020 election, declaring the only way that he could lose was for the election to be fixed. Again and again he told people he was winning when clearly he was consistently ten per cent behind Biden. Again and again he told lies about the Biden family, about Biden’s mental competence, and about unproven (and subsequently dismissed by over 100 judges) corruption at State level. And again and again he was facilitated and encouraged by those who knew better.

Today, when the Congress met to confirm the electoral college votes that would throw Trump out of office – and back, incidentally, into a morass of State-level court cases, many of which could see him jailed – Trump egged on a “protest rally” of armed extremist supporters to overturn the election result on his behalf, despite the fact that the election result is in and decided, the Congress vote is simply a formality and the Congress has no power to reject the decision.

“And after this, we’re going to walk down there, and I’ll be there with you, we’re going to walk down … to the Capitol and we are going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women,” Trump told the crowd. “And we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them. Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong.”

The president told the crowd that the election had been “rigged” by “radical democrats” and the “fake news media.”

And then he added a further measure of defiance mixed with a call to action.

“We will never give up. We will never concede. It doesn’t happen. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved,” Trump said. “Our country has had enough. We’re not going to take it anymore.”

He further said: “You’re the real people. You’re the people that built this nation. You’re not the people that tore down this nation.” And he added in a bit of irony: “Now it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy.” This despite that as had been patiently explained to him by his hand-picked Vice president, Mike Pence, that Congress had no ability to do so.

In the end, the lunatics in the crowd assaulted the Capitol, driven mad by a genuine sense of being deprived, as he must surely have known they would all along. Because this was the ultimate triumph of a process that started a long time ago, and which far too many Republicans and media commentators winked at for far too long.

Despite two tweets calling for respect for law and order – which surely revealed either his mendacious insincerity or his utter detachment from reality – he later seemingly justified the violence, occupation and besieging of the Capitol with this social media missive: “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!”

Twitter duly labeled the tweet as follows: “This claim of election fraud is disputed, and this Tweet can’t be replied to, Retweeted, or liked due to a risk of violence.” Later it banned him from further tweets temporarily. Unheard of, and some would say, far too little too late.

Trump told the rioters that he loved them. “We love you. You’re very special.” He told them to go home. Needless to say, they utterly ignored his disingenuous and weak plea and waded into the Capital with weapons.

With poles bearing blue Trump flags, a mob that would eventually grow into the thousands bashed through Capitol doors and windows, forcing their way past police officers unprepared for the onslaught. Lawmakers were evacuated shortly before an armed standoff at the House chamber’s entrance. A woman was shot and was rushed to an ambulance, police said, and later died. Canisters of tear gas were fired across the Rotunda’s white marble floor, and on the steps outside the building, rioters flew Confederate flags.

All this morass of misunderstanding and distress, though, was utterly inevitable. This writer and many others have warned of it repeatedly. As the magma grows in a volcano so the pressure must burst through somewhere. And in that, today’s events are not, in and of themselves, so shocking. As ye sow, so shall ye reap.

But let us hope ALL Americans – indeed all people in mature democracies all over the world – now seriously step back and ensure that Trumpism and all the movements that ape it is and are crushed.

With violence? No.

Populism (which is wildly different from popularity, of course) must be contested with facts. With knowledge. Everywhere. Every time. And also with courtesy for those who disagree with us.

Because be warned: this did not end tonight. And it will not end with the shocked looks and fine words seen from those in Congress, now that it has reconvened.

The fire that has been lit by Trump and his enablers will not be extinguished so easily. After four years of collective insanity 70 million Americans were still prepared to continue to support a known conman and virulent anti-democrat, aided and abetted by those who sought to ride to power on his coat tails, despite the consistent evidence of his failings presented to them in the media and by their friends and neighbours.

Why? Because the media itself had been utterly sidelined as “MSM” (mainstream media) by the Trumpists. As if mainstream media was something to be scared of, or automatically to be mistrusted. How far we have traveled.

No amount of bleating from the media that it was only presenting facts for consideration has ever made it through to the cult members, because they had long ago willingly closed their minds. They chose to believe they were being lied to.

And belief is a powerful thing. It easily and comprehensively replaces rational thought, which is tiring and tedious.

And the disbelief stretched right across the spectrum, so that even rabidly right-wing outlets like the Murdoch-controlled Fox News (itself long responsible for much of the worst Trumpist fake news and apologia over the years) has now joined the mistrusted. Fox’s unforgiveable sin? Accurately calling Arizona for Biden.

That is why this is not over.

A proportion of those 70 million will continue in their delusions, taking their “news” from stations and outlets that don’t even pretend to be purveying news, rather than opinion. And some of them – a tiny minority but big enough to wreak misery and chaos – will continue to make pipe bombs, and to assault legislatures and civic offices and personnel, and there will continue to be physical attacks on individuals and worse, right up to an including assassinations. To be sure, these things have tragically always bedevilled democracy, and American democracy especially. But the wilful dumbing down and manipulation of American politics has now made it worse than ever before. It’s not like America hasn’t had plenty of warning in the past decades. Oklahoma? Charleston church massacre? Pittsburgh synagogue shooting? El Paso? Threats against sitting Govenors?

The trend has long been perfectly clear. For example, the Anti-Defamation League reported that white supremacist propaganda and recruitment efforts on and around college campuses have been increasing sharply, with 1,187 incidents in 2018 compared to 421 in 2017, both far exceeding any previous year. Another example: a June 2020 study by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) reported that over 25 years of domestic terrorism incidents, the majority of attacks and plots had come from far-right attackers. The trend had accelerated in recent years, with this sector responsible for about 66% of attacks and plots in 2019, and 90% of those in 2020.

The failure of the leaders in society, specifically on the right, to confront the forces of un-reason more trenchantly is ultimately to blame, just as was the under-estimation of the pain of the disenfranchised that led to first the Tea Party and then Trump in the first place.

And yes, there have been examples of violence on all sides, and that should be freely admitted.

But the violence has been unequivocally shown to overwhelmingly come from the right, and been facilitated by the weak-kneed response of the right in the media, and the body politic. It’s time they owned it.

American democracy has not failed, yet, but it is still perilously close to failure.

The survival of Congress today should not be celebrated, other than for the fact that it is the starkest of wake-up calls for a country that has long been sleepwalking towards chaos.

Love Story – Highly Commended

Posted: October 28, 2020 in Political musings, Popular Culture et al
Tags: awards, creative, creative writing, Literary Taxidermy, short stories, writing

Close followers of the blog will know that I occasionally enter short story competitions around the globe, ‘subject matter various’. So far I have copped a few finalist guernseys but am yet to win one – but, you know Dear Reader, nothing ventured …

One Finalist award last year was in the excellent Literary Taxidermy competition, where in a wonderfully quirky set up the writers are given the first line and the last line of a famous novel and told to fill in the bit in the middle – last year was Fahrenheit 451. To read that story, buy the anthology here or in any good bookstore.

This year the story prompt was from “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley, (incidentally the basis of a great new TV series loosely based on the novel), and the stories had to begin with the words “124 was spiteful.” And they had to end with the word “Beloved.”, and be no more than 2,500 words long.

Although the 36 stories that got an “Honourable Mention” did not make it into the final anthology, they all reached the penultimate round of selection, which the judges said was as a result of “impressing our many readers”. So while it’s nice to win every time, it’s also nice to get recognised in this way.

Interestingly, yhe competition was won by another Melburnian, Amanda le Bas de Plumetot, with her story “Cornucopia”. Congratulations to her!

Here’s my entry. Enjoy.

LOVE STORY

124 was spiteful.

Still spiteful, after all this time.

A well of bile and defiance which never ran dry.

He honestly didn’t know why 124 kept it up. Most of the others had been tamed by the continual threats of sudden violence and the total loss of control over their own lives. They were mainly intellectuals. University types. Some businessmen. And various people of power and authority. Even an ex Government minister who had somehow avoided being shot. But while they inevitably subsided into morose submission, 124 retained his nasty edge.

He was sly. He would communicate welcome signs of acquiescence, then suddenly snarl a carefully considered insult, always designed to cut to the quick.

Usually it was about how a man such as he obviously was – a man of erudition, education and compassion – could square away working as a warden in a place like this.

How had he salved his conscience? What did he tell his children he did during the day? How would he feel if his child or mother or friend hung from these dank walls?

Usually he just ignored the jibe, but the truth in 124’s questions hurt. Stung him. He longed to shout that he was as much a prisoner of circumstance as the prisoner himself, because it was not as if the guards had any choice in their assignment. To refuse to serve in the jail was to risk being added to the list of inmates. Not just him, but his family, too.

So he accepted his lot, and tried to do his job without unnecessary cruelty. Lord knew there were more than enough guards in there who reveled in the excesses that their petty kingdoms granted them. In reality, he and the prisoners he tended to were locked in a ghastly embrace not of their making.

Sometimes 124 would let slip information about his life before. He had been a tailor to the great and mighty, creating suits of the finest weft and weave, and crisp khaki uniforms for the Generals. His store in the old town had been well-known – to shop there was to mark oneself as a man of means, and visiting it proclaimed you as a man who did not fear to rub shoulders with regime insiders.

He adopted an air of injured obsequiousness with his clients, as if no-one could truly appreciate his endless labouring for perfection, the results of which were exquisitely fitting clothing with a finish finer than from anywhere else in the City. He would quietly bemoan his failing eyesight and tortured fingers, clucking like an old hen as he moved around the customer making a chalk mark here, inserting a pin there. He would speak sharply to an endless retinue of young male assistants, berating them if they ever moved at anything less than a brisk trot.

He served his customers honey cakes and sweet tea, as was the custom. And, if they asked for it, a single malt lowland whiskey which was secretly shipped to him inside the bolts of cloth from Scotland, served in innocent china mugs for discretion.

Come the revolution, he had been vacuumed up with anyone who had associated with the previous regime. His store was ransacked, and he was incarcerated without anything resembling a fair trial. One of his many assistants babbled that he had often been seen speaking quietly with a secret policeman or officer or politician, his confidences unheard but his manner furtive. Another mentioned the shoe box of cash secreted under the counter, carefully husbanded against a rainy day. During the Terror, that testimony was more than enough for the tribunal. In less than ten minutes it was agreed that he had been informing, likely as not, and hoarding currency to boot. Either could have seen him tied to a post in some courtyard somewhere, blinking in the dawn sun, but as it was, he was flung into jail and forgotten about.

He became “124”.

The number was written in chalk above his head, where he stood or slumped against the bluestone wall, chained by one wrist. In reality, the metal ring and chain was a needless cruelty, as no one had ever escaped from the dungeon under the citadel in the 1200 years since it had first been built by the Crusaders as a forward post. The guard had counted eleven locked doors between the prisoner and the outside world, every one of which was double manned. And no one could tunnel out from any of the cells, as the walls were fifteen feet thick and plunged deep into the ground below the levels the prisoners were held on, and below that there was solid rock.

Prisoners never left their cells, using a steel bucket for their ablutions, which they emptied into a hole in the floor that was the entrance to a hugely long pipe not wide enough for a man’s shoulders to pass through, and which the guards would hose down weekly.

One baleful lightbulb burned in the centre of the room, night and day.

He had a small metal plate, and a single spoon, which he would present to the guard daily for what passed for food in the prison.

He often mused that he would have altogether preferred to have been shot like the others, rather than endure his prisoner’s life. Get it over and done with. 124 had told him once that he would have preferred that, too. He said he would seriously consider killing himself, except as he wore no clothes he couldn’t twist them and hang himself, nor could he contemplate pushing the spoon’s handle into his eye. “Maybe you could do it for me?” he had asked the guard. “You don’t care whether we live or die, or you wouldn’t be here. Could you help me die? Just make it look like I did it, eh?”

The guard had shaken his head sadly and turned away. “See! You’re a coward!”

124’s cries rang down the corridor after him. “You are not a man. You are a coward!”

Laying in bed that night, listening to his wife and daughter sleeping, he knew it to be true. He was a coward in many ways. He had thought of trying to drive over the border, but knew that to do so without good reason would be to invite a bullet to the head from the militia. He knew some who had tried and made it, and some who had tried and disappeared. He knew he did not have the courage to take the risk.

Except, he thought to himself, in times like these, even just to survive took courage. To get up, eat some bread and fruit, go to work, endure the scenes of degradation and fear, and then return home, forcing a smile to his face as he enquired after the girl’s schoolwork, or whether his wife had seen her mother that day. To simply continue with the daily round took all his strength.

Sometimes he wanted to run into the crowded street with its sellers of trinkets and foodstuffs and threw his head back and simply scream. Suck in deep lungfuls of warm, fetid air and scream out his agony. But he knew that to do so would bring his own arrest, and see him shipped to a re-education camp, or worse.

So he endured. Day after grinding day, he endured.

Then there was a day when he walked into the cell, carefully choosing a time when no other guards would disturb them, away from mealtimes or washing the cell, placed a metal chair inside and closed the door quietly behind him. He waited for 124 to look up and engage him. And when he did, he spoke quietly.

“Why do you attack me with your insults and sneering?” the guard asked. “I have never done anything to hurt you. I did not put you here. You must know I do not want to be here. I am a road worker. I lay asphalt. They make me be here. With any other guard, if you spoke to them the way you speak to me, you would be beaten, or worse. Why do you force your anger on me?”

124 sat a little more upright, and studied him, then answered politely.

“You are all I see on any day. After the interrogations, they chained me here, and I have seen no-one but you. I have done nothing wrong, yet they leave me here to rot. I am becoming weaker. I will die here, never having seen the sun again. An injustice has been done to me.” He gestured to the wall with his head. “They have even taken my name away. This insult must be answered, or I will go mad. So tell me: who should I be rude to, if not you?”

The guard considered carefully.

“But I am a prisoner here as much as you. Shedding your anger onto me is unjust. I treat you courteously, and do not inflict needless unkindness. Should you not treat me more kindly in return? They broke a man’s leg the other day because he swore at them. And they have not set it. I think he may die from pain and sepsis. I do not behave like this, do I?”

124 looked at him with a blank expression. After a long while, he spoke intently.

“But you are complicit in their wickedness. You are not the worst of the worse, but you are here, are you not? Yes, you treat me with common courtesy, perhaps, but how is that adequate redress for what has been done to me? You are a lackey. You are no different to the Kapos who shovelled the bodies into the crematoriums in the Nazi death camps, in return for the right to live a few weeks longer. Yes, perhaps your guilt is a little less, by degree, but no more. You are a log in the wall of the state they have erected. You are but a cog in the machine, and you allow yourself to be used by that machine. Your very submission to them is endorsement of what they do. This is why I insult you. What else can I do? It is the only way that I can resist. And if I do not resist, then I am complicit, too. Am I not?

He gestured to the man sitting on the chair.

“It is not personal. You are there.” Then he rattled his chain. “And I am here.”

124 shrugged. He left.

That night, he lay very still, pretending to sleep, and thought about what had been said to him. His eyes stared at the ceiling above him, though he saw nothing. Around four in the morning he rose and made himself a cup of tea. His wife found him sitting at the table nursing the cup hours later. She went to him in concern, for it was obvious he had been crying. But no matter how she urged him, he would not tell her what was wrong. Eventually he washed himself in their small bathroom, and left for work. Before leaving he kissed his wife and daughter and looked into their faces tenderly.

Walking to the jail, he made two small purchases. When he arrived, he engaged the front desk sergeant in conversation about the previous evening’s football game, because he knew the sergeant cared for his team more than life itself. He agreed it had been a hard fought battle, but the sergeant’s team had won through with superior fitness and effort. He moved on to his duties still able to feel the sensation of the sergeant’s firm handshake.

124 looked up as he came in. It was cold in the cell in the early morning, and he shivered. Later it would be unbearably hot. That was the way of it.

He spoke firmly.

“I have been considering what you said to me yesterday,” he announced. “And I have decided I must do more to help you. You know you will never be allowed out of here?”

124 looked up, surprised at this development. He shrugged and nodded. He knew it.

“They cannot risk you telling what you have seen here. And they have no interest in you anyway. They may kill you, as they have hung many at the main prison, in groups I am told, or you may simply be left here. Actually, they may have forgotten you.”

He paused, fingering the chalk in his pocket.

“What is your name?”

124 looked down, sadness in his eyes. His voice, when it came, was very different to his usual bitter tone. He almost whispered.

“It is Saleem Muhammed, good sir. Mr Muhammed. Named after my father: he was Saleem too. All the men in my family are called Saleem.”

He walked forward, and with his sleeve he rubbed out the “124” on the wall above the prisoner’s head. Then he carefully wrote Saleem Muhammed on the wall and stepped back.

“Like this?” he enquired, pointing to the wall. 124 turned and looked where he had written.

“Yes,” he said,” in wonderment. “Just like that.”

The guard let the piece of wood secreted in the sleeve of his shirt descend into his hand, and before 124 turned back to him he brought it down on the back of his head with all the strength he could muster. When the prisoner fell, he ignored the blood and brains spattering on his legs and kept hitting him. He kept beating his head until eventually he felt sure the thing was finished.

When he went back to the Sergeant, he explained that 124 had obviously found a piece of chalk from somewhere and engaged in forbidden behaviour by writing his name on the wall. He had then been insulting to the guard, using foul language. He had no alternative but to punish him severely, but he feared he might have killed him.

His superior inspected the scene and accepted without question that a piece of wood had been lying nearby and had conveniently come to hand.

“He deserved it,” he observed sourly, and rubbed out the name that the guard had written there just a little while before. How fleeting had been 124’s dignity, the guard thought.

“We’ll get rid of him. Go clean up. Take the rest of the day off. You did right. Didn’t think you had it in you. Well done.”

He gratefully accepted the offer.

At home, he reassured his wife and child that the blood was not his, and all was well. He offered no further explanation, and they knew he would not. But when he was clean and changed, he held his wife’s face in his hands hand and gently murmured:

“You are my world. You and the child. My whole world. Please never forget that.”

He paused. This was unlike him, he knew.

“You are …

He struggled to say it just right.

“Beloved.”

Being a true historickal account of the women of America

Posted: October 17, 2020 in Life, Political musings
Tags: abortion, Birth control, congress, contraception, discussion of female empowerment, empowerment of women, freedom, health, medicine, Planned Parenthood, politics, poverty, Republicans, Trump, Women, women's rights

Woman with child