The end of a bad old year

Liz and I had our New Year picnic on Stanton Moor today. After days of drab grey weather, the sun shone, and we managed to keep warm despite the bitter cold: we both wore long johns.

Official picnic selfie

Photo by Liz

We had crackers, mince pies, Christmas cake and satsumas after Liz’s delicious savoury flapjack, but the wind blew away my paper hat. 

It was a lovely end to a tricky year. For the first six months I struggled with despair over the genocide, and also had to deal with several minor health problems which brought me low, but which I now seem to have sorted out. 

The suffering in Gaza continues with over 400 people being killed by the IDF since the so-called ceasefire, and by awful rain and gales washing out tents. Now the Israelis are raining down another punishment - the ban on 37 aid organisations working in Gaza and the West Bank.

These are they:

You will see that The UK charity Medical Aid for Palestinians is in the list as well as MSF and the Quaker organisation American Friends Service Committee.

Here are statistics about the genocide from the last two years, taken from Al Jazeera.

I reckoned in an earlier post that 75% of my blog posts this year have been about Gaza or have mentioned Gaza, and yet this blog was never intended to be political. I had decided that if I continued with the blog I would try not to mention politics, and yet here I am, talking about Gaza again. 

You can take it as read, that in future, if I manage to stay away from politics, I will still be caring about Palestinians, still be supporting them in any way I can, and I will still be in support of political parties who work for social justice, peace, equality, tolerance, disarmament, the support of refugees, and solutions to climate change. (For the record, I do not consider Starmer’s Labour Party to be such a party.)

Enough!

I am sitting here,

 by a warm stove, in a safe house, with company, and enough to eat. I’m lucky. I hope you are too.

I wish us all a year ahead of hope, peace of mind, and a better world where leaders will act sanely and justly for the good of ordinary people. And where we also play our part.

Here’s a poem by Mary Walker: