A world that has forgotten how to love

 I am horrified by the proposed new asylum policies of our heartless government. I’d like that to go on record.

But today I am thinking about Gaza.

We have floods. They have floods.

Try to imagine.

But I wanted to tell you something else as well.

Dr Ezzideen Shehab is a physician in Gaza who founded the Alrahma Medical Centre, a free clinic, committed to providing accessible healthcare in north Gaza. His book about his experiences in Gaza, “Diary of a Young Doctor,” has recently been published by Readers and Writers Against the Genocide.

I came across his writing on Instagram. I hate Instagram. I joined it to see art and to post my own art, but it’s noisy and annoying. However, sometimes something pops up that I was not expecting and am pleased to see, such as film footage of a benefit concert for Gaza. It was there I came across the actor Denise Gough reading a moving excerpt from Shehab’s book.

I have transcribed it from the footage. Any errors are mine.

“During the last ceasefire when the guns fell silent as if exhausted by their own cruelty, the people of Gaza began to walk home. Tens of thousands filled the roads, a river of torn humanity flowing beneath a bruised and merciless sky. I saw them with my own eyes. Old men leaning on canes, mothers clutching the hands of frightened children, youths carrying the ghosts of their dead on their backs. They walked for hours, for days, not toward comfort, but towards the ruins that once bore their names. 

And I understood then that returning for them was not a journey. It was a resurrection. Each step was a prayer. Each tear a hymn. To walk toward their shattered home was to walk toward life itself though life no longer wanted them. But now even resurrection has lost its meaning.

When the army once again announced that people could return north, the news fell upon us like a stone in a dead sea. No echo, no stir, only silence. Those who ran now hesitate. Many like us no longer have homes. The walls that once held our laughter are dust. The air itself has forgotten our voices. Some went back for a day. Only to touch a wall that survived the inferno. Or to stand where their father once prayed. And then they returned quietly to their tents, carrying nothing but ashes in their hearts. 

Do you understand my friend? When a man prefers a tent to his own home it means the covenant between man and earth has been broken. It means exile has entered the soul. We have not only been driven out from our land, we have been expelled from the very idea of belonging. And now among Gaza’s youth there is but one word on every tongue. Rafah. It is no longer a crossing it is a dream. The last metaphor for hope and not the hope of life but the hope of escape. They wait for its gates to open as the damned wait for judgement. When it opens, you will see them thousands rushing forward faces wild with a desperate light as if salvation itself were fleeting and they must chase it or die. Many will have run toward the sea ready to throw themselves into its vast indifference chasing the trembling horizon of Europe. Some will drown but they will die moving forward. For them the sea is gentler than the land that devoured everything they loved. 

And the world will watch again in silence. That same hypocritical silence that covers the Earth like Ash. They will count bodies instead of saving them. They will hold conferences instead of hands. And they will speak of peace as if peace were not the cruellest word of all. The Israeli government knows this despair well. It delays the opening of the crossing not from ignorance but from knowledge. It knows that the deepest victory is not military. The deepest victory is when a people forget they wish to live. This is Gaza now. A place where even hope has grown tired. Where home has become a wound. And where survival itself feels obscene. The tents flap in the wind like dying lungs and inside them people no longer dream. They wait. They wait for the next door to open. Whether it leads to safety, the sea or the end. And sometimes I think that perhaps this is not Gaza alone. Perhaps this is the world itself. A world that has forgotten how to love. Yet dares still to call itself human. Free Palestine.”

You can donate to support the work of the clinic here:

https://chuffed.org/project/117739-dr-ezzideen-shehab#:~:text=Comments(0)&text=Ezzideen%20Shehab%20will%20have%20quick,raise%20the%20funds%20they%20need.

Blessed

How lucky am I to live in a cosy house with little risk of flooding. This is what I was thinking last night, as we sat by the fire doing a crossword together. 

And this morning I felt it even more as I read the news that the beleaguered (a word that is nowhere intense enough) people of Gaza are standing in flooded tents because they too have suffered heavy rainfall.

Meanwhile the bloody Israelis are still restricting the flow of aid.

I had a chat with one of my brothers the other day and he said how nice it was to read a cheerful blog post (like my last one.) I am having happy days and I’m thankful, while grieving for Gaza.

I went to see my painting in the Fronteer Gallery this last week. And I know three Sheffield friends have been to vote for it. Did I tell you the prize was a two week solo exhibition? Wish me luck!

And today is MsX’s third birthday! Whooppee! I shall see her and her family and have lunch with them. I’ll see her trying out her new scooter. I can’t wait. She is such a funny little character. So active, so spunky, throwing herself into new experiences with huge gusto. If she was offered a bungee jump I’m sure she would take it. And yet she looks like the kind of pretty-pretty child, with her long curly hair and her round pink cheeks, who would prefer to sit quietly and play with dolls. Imagine a Mabel Lucie Attwell girl.

OK, that’s enough grandma slush.

I have to get up and do my knee exercises. Then I shall paint until it’s time to see the family. 

I hope you are safe and dry and that you have a good day.

Perfect day

You are in an online virtual clothing shop and you don’t know where all the different departments are. You have six minutes to get yourself kitted out in line with a theme that has been chosen for this round of the game, such as ‘Summer camp’ or ‘Evening in the city.’

You’re still not absolutely sure what your left and right fingers do on the touchscreen of your tablet, which is how you move around the shop, (too often I get stuck behind a plant or a shelf full of shoes) and before you do anything else you have to find your way to the salon to choose a skin colour and a made up face, and then move to a chair to choose a hairstyle, because if you forget all this, you will stay a rich metallic grey head to toe and be faceless and bald, which I think you'll agree is not a good look unless the theme is ‘Alien.’

At the end of the six minutes there is a fashion parade of all the participants, who all vote. At this stage you can also choose which poses you want to adopt (some of which are absolutely ludicrous - e.g. lying on your back and kicking your legs - which of course being a classy broad, I shun.)

This is me playing DRESS TO IMPRESS with Cece in Colorado. We are on FaceTime on our phones so we can chat and I can yelp for help - and we are both in the same online space on our iPads, with random unknown teenyboppers also online. (I have just looked up this word teenybopper which hails from the 1960s and 1970s to check if there is a modern slang equivalent which encapsulates everything I want to say but there is none, so there you go).

I have had the honour to win first place once, and second once, and third on a couple of occasions but my overall record is not good. And do you know why? Although I love clothes and fashion and playing games, I am out of my depth with teen culture. For example when the theme was ‘Wicked weekend away’ I thought it meant one thing (you can imagine) but everybody else who was playing realised it referred to the film Wicked and the characters in it. Hey Ho. When the theme was ‘Elegant’ I realised that these kids don’t know what elegance means because I easily should’ve won and I wasn’t even placed. Hey ho again.

But I love this game! And I love playing with Cece. When I can’t find my way around the shop, she comes and rescues me and directs me to where the shoes or the skirts or whatevers are. And she is so patient.

I played this game yesterday afternoon, at the end of a perfect day. In the morning I’d ridden to the end of the trail with a flask of coffee and took photos of the beautiful autumn trees 

possibly to paint later. In the afternoon I sat and painted. 

Then I played with my fabulous granddaughter 5000 miles away.

How lucky am I?

 

Meanderings

 Yesterday when I woke up my joints ached and I felt old and gruesome, but the sun was shining and I had to go to Bakewell on errands, so I decided not to drive, but to cycle down the Trail to Bakewell.

As soon as I set off down the lane I felt better. Fresh air always improves my mood. It makes me feel alive. The ride on an empty Trail was wonderful. The dog walkers had already been and gone and the visitors had not yet arrived. And Bakewell is so lovely without the tourists. November after half term is one of the quieter times as far as tourists go. 

The trees on the Trail were lovely too. 

I’m sitting in bed reading one of my books - Even When They Know You. 

It’s the last novel I wrote. It’s about losing a best friend, and is based on my losing my best friend Mary. It’s ten years ago since she died, but I have been missing her this week, and later this morning I’m having coffee with one of her daughters. 

Anyway…I’m really enjoying the book and seeing things I never saw in previous readings. ( Yes, I know it’s odd when I wrote the thing!) One thing I’m seeing is how flawed the narrator is: that’s interesting. 

Tomorrow I’m going with a friend to the opening of an exhibition at the Fronteer Gallery in Sheffield. This painting of mine is in it. 

Have a good weekend.

Blast from the past

 I was looking for something in my filing cabinet yesterday for something I had put in a special place because it was important and I didn’t want to lose it, but I couldn’t remember what the special place was. It wasn’t there, but I did find some old papers from when I attended my very first creative writing class, in 1999.

One of the papers was Kurt Vonnegut’s “8 basics of creative writing.” The first rule is:

Use the time of a perfect stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

That, friends, is why I post so rarely now. I don’t feel I have anything funny or riveting to tell you.

Something else I found was a poem I had written after seeing the Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks film You’ve Got Mail. I don’t write poems now, or novels, or screenplays: I paint.

But I thought you might like to read the poem:

The last of

There are still leaves on the copper beeches in our garden, and the nasturtiums and marigolds cling on in one’s and twos, all because we still have had no frost. 

The cosmos would have hung on too, but I needed the flower bed to plant bulbs and wallflowers. So I picked them…the last of the cosmos until next summer. 

The last of the cosmos

A friend once told me we should savour every moment because we never know when it will be the last time  - the last time we see a much loved parent, a much loved friend, a much loved view. 

This and that

I recently told you what telly I was watching, and I want to inform Marmee (who commented on the blog post) that she shouldn’t feel bad that Sullivan’s Crossing isn’t showing in her region. After the first series it becomes slow and soppy, and I’ve been mopping up the episodes in the way I would finish up something in the fridge I was fed up with eating: I have them on in the background while I am painting. Yep, TV as audio. It’s been a disappointment, rather like the writer’s other Netflix series, Virgin River, which began well and then turned to mush.

Oh well, Riot Women here I come!

I had a super 24 hour trip to see Het in London last week. We went to see the Neo-Impressionist exhibition at the National Gallery which was interesting; and we did a lot of talking.

Here’s the official selfie for the trip, taken in Trafalgar Square.

It was so good to talk, and a treat to eat something different from everyday Hepworth Towers meals. I wish I could be bothered to try out new recipes. I see something in a weekend paper that looks tasty and do-able ( i.e. I recognise and can easily source the ingredients) and duly cut out the recipe, which on the Monday tidy-up gets stuffed on the dresser shelf and never looked at again, because I can’t be bothered. When my paintings are sold at Sotheby’s, I’ll have a cook and a housekeeper and then I’ll get a varied menu.

On Saturday Het was busy, so I went round the permanent exhibition at Tate Britain on my own. I saw a lot of great paintings, and also became better acquainted with Turner. This may sound like sacrilege, but I think I can live without him.

I did find this painting of his interesting, though.

This painting called Green and White, by Sandra Blow, was huge. I liked it. 

I also liked the story about it. While it was still a work in progress, someone slashed it right through, from top to bottom, and Blow mended it and carried on with the work. You can see her stitches if you get up close. In my photo, you can make out a vertical line two thirds of the width from the left hand side. That’s the mend. Go Blow!

Letter from home

Dave and I recently visited old friends who have bought four of my paintings in the past, and seeing the paintings again, displayed in someone else’s living space, was heartwarming. 

‘Cow Parsley’

‘Trapped’

Although I have photos of them, seeing them for real again was as delightful as  meeting old friends unexpectedly.

Last week was a good week. On Monday I had the picnic with Liz, on Thursday a bike ride on the Trail, with coffee (from my flask) in the valley below

and on Friday we visited the Hepworth Gallery in Wakefield 

to see an exhibition of Caroline Walker’s paintings called “Mothering.” I’ve been wanting to see her paintings for some time, and I really enjoyed it. Check her out.

https://hepworthwakefield.org/whats-on/caroline-walker/

I love the subjects of her paintings - all those involved in mothering - and I liked her scenes in the maternity unit of University College Hospital. Seeing her two paintings ‘1 and 2 p’ made me nostalgic and wished I was back forty odd years feeding one of my own babies. 

It was the first time we’d been to the Hepworth so that was interesting too. It’s a brutalist building from the outside, but inside the space is lovely, with occasional views of the river.

And there is a lovely garden, though it was too grey and chilly to sit out there.

The gallery offers terrific value, with an entrance ticket cheaper than London galleries AND it covers all the exhibitions going on, as well as the permanent collection of Hepworths, eg

We went especially to see the Caroline Walker exhibition but I will be watching out for future events there.

Last two good things…I’ve been enjoying Life Begins on Netflix, and now I am hooked on the soapy and emotional Sullivan’s Crossing, also on Netflix. In my sights are BBC’s  Riot Women, written by Sally Wainwright, and the next series of Nobody Wants This on Netflix.

And I’m reading a new book I was surprised to find on our shelves, which says in the inside cover:

I don’t remember this at all. I mean…I remember sitting in a comfy chair in The Tattered Cover reading, but not buying, a Graham Swift book, but not reading or buying this book. It’s quite fun to find a surprise on your bookshelves. I wonder if this will happen more and more in the future…

They speak for me

I am on the mailing list of Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT)  and this morning I received their statement on the ceasefire As I am of exactly the same mind, I am copying their statement here.

Ceasefire must lead to real peace, freedom for Palestinians, and accountability for all abuses

CAAT welcomes the ceasefire agreed in Gaza between Israel and Palestinian armed groups. An end, at least for now, to Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, and the release of Israeli and Palestinian hostages, who have often suffered untold trauma and abuse in captivity, is an enormous relief.

However, no-one should imagine that this ceasefire represents an end to Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza, still less to the decades-long occupation, apartheid, and dispossession of the Palestinian people. Israeli forces remain in occupation of Gaza and are still killing Palestinian civilians. Thousands of Palestinians remain imprisoned by Israel, often without charge and under conditions of torture and other ill treatment. Israeli military and settler violence and dispossession of Palestinians continues unabated in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. 

Israel has broken ceasefire agreements and returned to war in the past, and there is little to guarantee that it will not do so again. The Trump-led plan for Gaza is vague and problematic, with no clear path to Palestinian self-determination, and with concerning proposals for Gaza to be ruled by an international “peace council” headed by Donald Trump and Tony Blair, both of whom have wreaked untold havoc in the Middle East.

During the coming weeks and months, and the crucial negotiations over the second and subsequent stages of the ceasefire agreement, with the hoped-for goal of achieving lasting peace, it is essential for serious international pressure on Israel to be maintained and increased. It is Israel that holds overwhelming power and control over the Palestinians, and that continues to deny Palestinians their fundamental rights and dignity, and all too often their lives. Therefore, only massive international pressure can ensure that Israel maintains the ceasefire, allows unrestricted aid into Gaza to relieve the famine and devastation of the health care system it has caused, and withdraws its forces from Gaza; and beyond that, that it end its illegal occupation and ongoing land theft in the West Bank, and agrees to move to a lasting and just peace that affords freedom, security, and equal rights to all.

In particular, Israel’s occupation, like the genocide it has perpetrated in Gaza, would not be possible without the vast arms supplies and military support it receives from the US and other countries, including the UK. Even if the ceasefire holds and leads to a permanent end to the war and genocide in Gaza, it is these arms supplies that will continue to uphold Israel’s occupation and repression. Pressure on Israel must include an end to these arms supplies, including the F-35 combat aircraft for which the UK continues to supply components. Licences that have been suspended must remain so.

Finally, an end to the fighting cannot mean that the atrocities committed over the past two years should be allowed to be forgotten. There must be accountability for all abuses. Israel has been found to be committing genocide in Gaza by numerous other UN member states, by international genocide scholars, and by a UN Commission of Inquiry. It has deliberately engineered starvation in Gaza by denying the supply of sufficient food and by destroying Gaza’s capacity to feed itself. Israeli attacks have frequently killed dozens or hundreds of civilians, and children, healthcare workers, and journalists have often been directly targeted. Hospitals, schools, universities, mosques and churches, water facilities, and agricultural land, have been deliberately destroyed. Hamas also killed civilians in its attacks on October 7 2023, and took and held civilians hostage. The ICC has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, former Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas commander Mohhamed Deif, although the latter was subsequently withdrawn when he was confirmed as killed. Investigations are continuing and more indictments must follow. 

The ICC and other investigatory bodies must be fully supported in their efforts to investigate and prosecute all crimes committed by all parties since October 7 2023. US sanctions against Court officials and against NGOs working with the ICC, including Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Haq, currently engaged in a legal case against the UK government over arms sales to Israel, are an outrageous attack on international justice and must be lifted. In particular, all states have a legal obligation to prevent and punish genocide.

Now that a UN inquiry has found that Israel has committed genocide, the UK and other governments must take all feasible measures to support the investigation and prosecution of genocide crimes, including starvation crimes, by Israel. If genocide is simply brushed under the carpet and ignored once a ceasefire is in place, and is allowed to go unpunished, not only is this is a monstrous injustice in itself to the tens of thousands of victims, but it would destroy the credibility of the international community as being willing or capable to prevent and punish the very worst of crimes, and would make other genocides, current and future, much harder to prevent or stop.

A break

The state of the world got a bit too much for me last week but I feel a lot better now.

Liz and I had a walk and a picnic arranged for Monday. We’d had it planned for a couple of weeks. Sunday was a gorgeous golden October day, but Monday dawned misty and dank. I went to ALDI early and when I’d finished shopping and got back in the car the windscreen was wet. As I was driving home with the wipers on I thought…maybe we could have a picnic in Liz’s lovely sitting room with the nice view instead of outside. 

When I got home, Liz had texted 

We think alike! 👌

Then as I was putting the shopping away, the sky brightened, so I rang her up, and we decided we’d do the walk we’d planned. If it was miserable we could always go back to her house.

But it wasn’t miserable. It was lovely.

We walked (for six miles!) in the woods above Chatsworth and ate our picnic in a clearing in front of a lake. The lack of sunshine didn’t matter. It was peaceful and heavenly and perfectly still. I felt blessed. Friendship and nature are treasures.

You can just see Chatsworth House in the valley…

Let’s hope

“uni solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant”  

where they create a desert, they call it peace

(Words ascribed by Tacitus to Calgacus, the Britons’ leader. Thank you Dave, my resident classicist.)

I hope this is the beginning of a safer and more peaceful time for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, though I can’t believe in the peace deal, or rather I don’t believe in the honesty and trustworthiness of Nethanyahu and his government. And if the ceasefire holds, who is going to be in charge of Gaza? It doesn’t look as if it will be Palestinians. 

I’m sorry to be so pessimistic. At the very least more aid will enter and people will eat. I hope with all my heart that more good things will follow.

Yesterday I woke up and read the news and it was all so bad I could hardly face the day. The world and its future looked so bleak I didn’t want to be here to see it. I get like that from time to time.

Dave was out for the day, so I rang Liz and she told me I must have at least one treat and send her the evidence. Just talking to her helped. I managed to get up eventually and made soup, and cheese scones (the treat) to go with it.

They were disappointing. Does any one have a recipe for cheese scones that rise and taste really cheesy? Serious request. If I’d had the car I would have driven to Chatsworth Farm Shop and bought one of their scones. 

Anyway, today is a new day, and Dave and I are going to see old friends in Nottingham. Dave was Keith’s best man in 1970. How ancient are we?

Thank you for being there, friends. I always feel better for writing the blog.

Angry

 I’m feeling too angry with Starmer at the moment to write a post. But I have written to Keir Starmer.

Dear  Keir Starmer,

In asking people not to protest about the genocide in Gaza on the anniversary of the horrific Hamas attack two years ago, you are conflating Jews and Judaism with the criminal actions of Nethanyahu and his supporters.

This conflation increases the chance of antisemitism and attacks on Jews. 

It is perfectly possible to be horrified by the Hamas atrocities of two years ago, and the antisemitic attacks on Jews in this country, at the same time as being horrified by the ongoing genocide being committed by the Israeli state right now.

Do Palestinian lives not matter? Are Palestinian children disposable?

Your inhumanity and intransigence in continuing to deal with Israel, in ongoing trade and in giving military support, is shocking, despicable, and it makes me ashamed to be British. It is not the protesters who don’t represent British values, it is you.

The majority of the British people, and ordinary people all over the world, are appalled by the genocide in Gaza. Aren't you? If you are, then take some action!

Yours sincerely 
Sue Hepworth (Mrs)

The conscience of the world

 The news of the flotilla was the first thing on my mind this morning, and I texted my aging hippie friend in California with a link to the live feed about it in the Guardian. She had texted earlier in the week:

This is what the Israelis said to one of the boats in the flotilla: 

“If you continue in your route and attempt to breach the naval blockade, we WILL stop your vessel and act to confiscate it through legal proceedings in court.”

The moving response was this:

“We are here with the conscience of the world, moving peacefully in a non-violent humanitarian mission to take this aid. You are not allowed by international law to stop us. Therefore we do not comply with your request, because your request is still an attempt to perpetuate the genocide of the Palestinian people.”

The latest news I can find is that although Greta Thunberg and others have been arrested, 30 boats are still sailing on towards Gaza.

How can it be that political leaders the world over let Israel perpetuate a genocide?

This world we are living in, in October 2025, is dark and violent, and I am sick at heart.

Avoiding the news

It was a good weekend, despite the fact that four good friends who were due to come to the exhibition couldn’t, all because of different, individual, emergency medical situations. How odd is that? 

But I had some interesting conversations, not just about the paintings, but about the PAINTING, if you see what I mean. 

And this painting sold:

This morning I am despairing over Starmer. What a dud.

We need leadership and inspiration, compassion and moral courage, not deaf, intransigent, more-of-the-same blah. 

I suppose it’s good news about the Labour Party conference voting - despite Starmer’s best effort at blocking it - that yes, it is a genocide, and the U.K. should be acting appropriately.

Led by Donkeys unfurled this banner outside Parliament last year

And looking at the news…why are outsiders going to be in charge of Palestine? What about Palestinians? 

I could go on railing about the news forever, but I want to enjoy my day, so…I shall have a bike ride, make a lasagne for our next refugee hospitality day, and start a new painting.

The sun rises in spite of everything.

Almost ready!

We’re almost ready for the weekend exhibition of this last year’s paintings. Dave did a sterling job as always of helping me display them. I really couldn’t do it as well without him and I’m not just talking about the practical jobs. He has a great eye for display.

Here are the two room set up and ready:

I wish you were all coming.It would be so nice to meet you all!

The Flotilla

 It is hard to find news of the Global Sumud Flotilla (the flotilla of steadfastness) sailing across the Mediterranean with aid for Gaza. I always have to search for it. Why is that?

Yesterday they were harassed again by drones and explosions and the jamming of their communications. But the good news is that Italy and now Spain have sent frigates to assist them. The flotilla will be entering dangerous waters soon, where previous attempts to reach Gaza have been stopped by the Israelis. The latter’s actions are so far outside international law already that I can’t think anything would stop them from physically harming the people on board the ships in the flotilla. These are ordinary people, trying to break the siege. Trying to shame their governments into taking effective action to stop the genocide.

Earlier in the week there was a general strike in Italy in support of Gaza. Did you hear about that? Why are these events not headlines? Ordinary people all over the world want their leaders to act to stop the genocide, and their leaders do zilch. What is wrong with them? Why do they tolerate so many crimes committed by Israel? I am outraged and sickened by their lack of compassion, and their lack of moral courage.