Contrast

I’ve been away on a five day break and I’ve had a blog post half written about Starmer and Gaza, and me, for most of the week…but serious relaxing, talking and wave watching has got in the way. I needed a break. I’ve been under par. A booked holiday was postponed for a month due to circs beyond my control, and my dear friend Het said “Come and stay with us!”

So I did.

This is the view from Het’s terrace

This is the view from Het’s sitting room

That’s the colour of the sea in Sennen Cove.

And this is the colour on the other side of the peninsula

And can you spot me in this one below - the person on the right, about to go for a paddle?

Dave hates the sea. He thinks it’s a waste of space. And he detests the noise of the waves. For me there is nothing as relaxing as sitting watching the tide come in, or lying on the sand in warm sunshine listening to it. Troubles drifted away. Decisions were made. And there was an awful lot of nothingness, by which I mean drifting. It was just what I needed.

But still the news broke in.

Starmer’s latest speech on immigration, for example.

Please, please, someone tell him that it is poverty he needs to eradicate, not people.

Well before I didn’t vote for him, I had decided I didn’t trust him because of his answers to two questions in one of those brief Q and A pieces I read in a weekend magazine.

He was asked if it was more important to play or to win, and he said to win.

And he was asked what was the last lie he had told, and it was a lie to his children about the ingredients of something he’d made them for tea.

And I knew he was not my kind of man, let alone leader.

Meanwhile, this week, UK government lawyers were arguing in court that there is no evidence of a genocide being committed in Gaza, so selling arms to Israel is perfectly legit. And the genocide continues.

Meanwhile…

There I was in Cornwall, in heaven. How do we reconcile the immense suffering of so many others with our own happiness?