Dave’s brief letter in the Guardian today

 

War crimes

I am sorry it’s been a week since I’ve blogged.

I was revving up to tell you about an art course I’ve been on, and various other bits of news from Hepworth Towers, but now, since Keir Starmer’s hopeless statement on Gaza this week, I don’t have the heart. 

We need outright condemnation of Israel, complete sanctions - trade and otherwise - and recognition of Palestine as a state now.  It should have happened years ago. Saying it won’t happen if there is a ceasefire is ridiculous. Israel is not to be trusted: it broke the last ceasefire. Its plans for Gaza and Palestinians are open and obscene. We need an end to the war, and an end to any kind of friendship or support for Israel while they pursue their obscenities.

In his unwavering support for Israel, Keir Starmer is complicit in the genocide. 

First step

 At last the ‘western world’ has spoken out against Israel’s barbarity.

As expected, Israel doesn’t care.

Now, we need concrete action to stop the genocide. And we need it NOW, as starving Palestinians are dying of malnutrition every day, while others are being killed as they queue for food.

On Saturday I was part of a refugee hospitality day, welcoming refugees and asylum seekers living in Derby to a day out in Bakewell.

We run two or three of these every year. We pay for the bus to bring our guests, provide craft activities making things to take away, take them a walk along the river, on a visit to the folk museum; we provide a lovely lunch, games inside and in the garden, but most importantly, a warm and friendly welcome. 

There is a lot of preparation beforehand, and for those on the committee (of which I’m one) it’s tiring. OK, I admit that for various reasons, this time I was so exhausted I stayed in bed until 2 pm the next day. But it was worth it.

We’re not offering solutions to our visitors’ problems, we’re offering a day out from their difficult lives, and we’re creating happy memories too. The feedback we get is heartwarming. The smiles, the thanks, the hugs and the waves from our guests at the end of the day are precious.

Here’s a comment from one of our guests in April “Thank you very much. I have never experienced such a wonderful moment since I arrived in England.”

HOME  by Warsan Shire

Watch and listen

https://www.google.com/search?q=home+by+warsan+shire&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-gb&client=safari#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:e7de3db0,vid:vR6tqLwInZQ,st:0

Or read it here:

Home

no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well

your neighbors running faster than you
breath bloody in their throats
the boy you went to school with
who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory
is holding a gun bigger than his body
you only leave home
when home won’t let you stay.

no one leaves home unless home chases you
fire under feet
hot blood in your belly
it’s not something you ever thought of doing
until the blade burnt threats into
your neck
and even then you carried the anthem under
your breath
only tearing up your passport in an airport toilets
sobbing as each mouthful of paper
made it clear that you wouldn’t be going back.

you have to understand,
that no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land
no one burns their palms
under trains
beneath carriages
no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck
feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled
means something more than journey.
no one crawls under fences
no one wants to be beaten
pitied

no one chooses refugee camps
or strip searches where your
body is left aching
or prison,
because prison is safer
than a city of fire
and one prison guard
in the night
is better than a truckload
of men who look like your father
no one could take it
no one could stomach it
no one skin would be tough enough

the
go home blacks
refugees
dirty immigrants
asylum seekers
sucking our country dry
niggers with their hands out
they smell strange
savage
messed up their country and now they want
to mess ours up
how do the words
the dirty looks
roll off your backs
maybe because the blow is softer
than a limb torn off

or the words are more tender
than fourteen men between
your legs
or the insults are easier
to swallow
than rubble
than bone
than your child body
in pieces.
i want to go home,
but home is the mouth of a shark
home is the barrel of the gun
and no one would leave home
unless home chased you to the shore
unless home told you
to quicken your legs
leave your clothes behind
crawl through the desert
wade through the oceans
drown
save
be hunger
beg
forget pride
your survival is more important

no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear
saying-
leave,
run away from me now
I don’t know what I’ve become
but i know that anywhere
is safer than here

Warsan Shire

 

Only one topic

 Look, I have no idea when I will be able to blog again about something other than Gaza.

I am so appalled by this government’s lack of concern for what is happening there. I am so depressed and so angry.

Look at Starmer’s response in the Commons to this question asked by Imran Hussain in Prime Minister’s Questions:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aTNGXbcL8U

And this week the EU refused to take sanctions against Israel. So they are complicit too.

Tomorrow there is a big demo in London STOP STARVING GAZA

https://palestinecampaign.org/events/national-march-for-palestine-stop-starving-gaza/

which unfortunately I can’t go to, as I am involved in our Refugee Hospitality Day.

The majority of the British public are appalled by what Israel is doing.

Israeli teenagers are burning their draft papers because they won’t take part in a genocide

https://www.nbcnews.com/video/shorts/israelis-burn-military-draft-papers-in-gaza-protest-243385925845

New graduates of Edinburgh University walked out of their graduation ceremony this week in protest at the university’s investments in companies complicit in the war on Gaza.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QehJYTZ7ssc

Have you written to your MP lately?

Are you boycotting Israeli goods?

Have you checked your investments to make sure none of them support Israel?

I am asking you, because I can’t think of anything else that I can do to stop this obscenity, an obscenity that will go down in history as an atrocity allowed by the politicians of the western world.

 

 How has it come to this?

That the United Kingdom is complicit in a genocide.

Lucky

Every morning when I switch on the shower I am thankful. It’s just something that comes over me. I think of all the people who don’t have showers, don’t have food, don’t have safety, don’t have roofs. I think of people in Gaza who are starving, and who get shot when queueing for food. 

I am so fortunate. 

The trainee GP I saw ten days ago saw my Gaza bracelet and asked if I was from Gaza. 

“No,” I said, “but I can’t bear what is happening there. I can’t bear that the world is standing by and letting it happen.”

“I am from Gaza,” she said. 

We had a short conversation about it, but it was my eyes that filled with tears. 

She referred me to the hospital for a gastroscopy, and yesterday I had it.

The consultant gastroenterologist introduced himself with a name of Middle Eastern origins. And when he saw my bracelet he said “Fine bracelet.”

Everything went smoothly. I’d been nervous, but there was no need. The nurses were kind and efficient. The doctor was friendly and skilful. And I came home with the results of what they could see with the camera. The biopsy results will come later. I have some problems, but none of them are dire.

I am so grateful for the care of the NHS, damaged as it is by the purposeful neglect of previous governments. Will this one improve things? We’ll have to see.

I’m so grateful for Dave’s tender care, and for the love of my family and friends.

I’m so grateful for where I live.

This was me picking sweet peas in my pyjamas yesterday morning. 

Today I’ve been instructed by Dave to take it easy; it’s only 7 o clock and he’s already washed the kitchen and bathroom floors. What a guy! 

Liz is dropping by for a quick hello and to bring me some Welsh cakes. 

I’ve got it made.

This week

 I know I owe you a post. Here are the headlines.

The docs have not found a solution to my annoying but minor health problem but they’re still on the case.

Dave is always very nice to me when I'm under the weather. I gave him a big hug the other day and said: "Thank you for being so sweet. I know you'll look after me when I'm old and decrepit," and he said "I already do."

The garden was bone dry and the seedlings not growing, but today we have woken up to steady rain and I’m delighted for the garden and the farmers.

I’ve been:

cooking and freezing stuff for the next Refugee Hospitality Day lunch;

picking raspberries every two days, eating some, freezing some for Eton mess when the Americans come in August;

picked and frozen gooseberries;

picked blackcurrants and we made some jam. There are more to be picked. 

I finished another painting, this one inspired by my holiday in Pembrokeshire. It’s called “To the beach!”

As for the news - Palestine Action, a non-violent protest group acting to stop the genocide, has been classed alongside violent terrorist organisations and proscribed. And yesterday in London, a group of brave people protested about this proscription, including an 83 year old woman. They were arrested, and face up to 14 years in prison for this protest in this fine democracy of ours.

The protest was organised by a group called Defend Our Juries and they put out this statement:

They also said:

BBC photo

There was no need to proscribe Palestine Action. They could be prosecuted under criminal law for causing damage. Our government consulted with the Israelis, Israeli lobby groups, and arms manufacturers before this legal action, but not with the many civil liberties organisations opposing the ban. Since when do we need to listen to what the Israelis think when we are framing our laws?

There is still one thing we can do in the face of a repressive government deaf to the opinions of the majority of the public, and that is give to charities working in Gaza.

Medical Aid for Palestinians

Red Cross/Red Crescent

And you can join the non-violent organisation that has been organising the national protests against the genocide for the last 18 months. It's still legal.

Palestine Solidarity Campaign

And you could support conscientious objectors in Israel.

Refuser Solidarity Network

The latest from here

 I am still under par, physically, but I won’t bore you with the details. At least I can paint, at least my beloved 2 year old granddaughter can visit, and above all, I’m thankful for Dave’s patience and loving care.

Here is a letter to be sent to MPs. Please use it if you’d like to.

Below that is my latest painting, almost finished.

What is there left to do to stop the genocide?

This the opening paragraph of an article in the Guardian today written by Sally Rooney. It’s about Palestine Action which is trying to stop the genocide. The majority of the British people want action to stop the genocide.

Writing on Sunday, the Palestine Solidarity Committee reported that in the previous 48 hours, 200 Palestinians had been killed and over 1000 injured. Starving Palestinians are being lured to food distribution sites and then killed.

How do we do it? How do we get Starmer to change course and cut off ties with Israel when we have tried every peaceful method we can think of - writing to our MPs, demonstrating, writing to the papers. There has been a demo in London every month since the war on Gaza began. Last Saturday 350,000 people held a peaceful march through London.

Did you know that: 

• the UK airforce flies reconnaissance planes over Gaza
• Starmer allows Israeli planes to use the UK air base in Cyprus
• the UK army train officers of the Israeli Defence Force
• the UK supplies F35 parts for war planes which Israel use

The U.K. government knows the majority agrees with the marchers, and that their position - complicity with Israel - is a fringe position, out of step with the majority of public opinion.

I am at a loss. Of course, Palestine Action tried something else (as above) and they have been called terrorists and are being threatened with being made a proscribed organisation.

I have just written to my MP again, but I told Dave yesterday I felt like chaining myself to the railings of Downing Street. 

Books, books, books

 I am currently taking an antibiotic, of which a common side effect is insomnia, which means I am awake for several hours in the middle of the night. And I have to say that episodes of Grace and Frankie  - which I have already seen twice - are a wonderful comfort. I have also rewatched a couple of episodes of As Time Goes By. They offer similar succour.

Along similar lines, the topic for our next Bakewell Quaker newsletter is “Which three books or authors do you return to and why?” which Chrissie Poulson (also a member of Bakewell Meeting) suggested. She has sent her contribution to me, as the editor, but also put it on her blog to which there is a link at the side of my blog. So I thought I’d follow suit and share my contribution with you.

It was very very hard choosing just three, but here are my choices of books/authors in no particular order : 

Leaving Home by Garrison Keillor - because it’s a comfort. The book is insightful and amusing, and it’s about ordinary people. I prefer reading about everyday life and everyday people to reading about ‘important’ people.

The novels of Anne Tyler - because she also writes so well about ordinary people with ordinary lives. Her books are entertaining, hold valuable insights into human nature and human dilemmas, and they are well written in a style I like. I don’t read books that have a writing style I don’t like, no matter how worthy or highly recommended they are. For example I have stopped reading Barbara Kingsolver’s books because although she has a nice style, she uses two pages to express something when two sentences would do, and it drives me nuts. Incidentally, I just listened to one of her earlier books on BBC Radio Sounds, and I enjoyed it, because it was abridged. The title is Holding the line: women in the great Arizona mine strike.

My third choice is a set of three poetry anthologies published by Bloodaxe: Staying Alive, Being Alive, and Being Human - because they offer such a huge and fantastic collection of contemporary poetry. ( I rarely like poetry written before the 20th century, and yes that does include Shakespeare, so sue me.) The poems in these anthologies deal with every aspect of life - birth, death, growing up, family, love life, war and peace, war and survival, living in hope, loss, the daily round, and much much more. These anthologies offer me food for thought, consolation, encouragement, inspiration, explanations, and sometimes humour. Here are two poets’ words on poetry which express how I feel:

Dana Gioa: “Poetry is the art of using words charged with their utmost meaning.”

R.S.Thomas: “Poetry is that which arrives at the intellect by way of the heart.”

Here are three poems I found in one or other of these anthologies:

Life goes on

 I just asked Dave how I could possibly write about domestic trivia on here when the world is in such a dire state, with another obscene war begun by the Israelis and western leaders on the brink of assisting them. Oh my God! When will these people see that all war does is create suffering and vast piles of wealth for arms manufacturers and dealers? When will they invest in peace building and negotiation? 

Dave said we need distractions and something to laugh about so I should go ahead with something light.

Do you remember when our trusty AEG cooker packed up after 27 years of faithful service ( at Christmas 🙄) and we bought a state of the art cooker with an induction hob? This was 18 months ago. Dave hated that cooker because it was black. I see stainless steel, but he sees black.

He has an irrational but very real hatred of black. He says it’s too looming. It’s a very dark presence sucking the light out of the room. Apparently there is a phobia called melanophobia: he doesn’t have that but he’s on the brink.

I suppose I should tell you that when I am away from home Dave spends a lot of time sitting in the kitchen with the radio on, while he plays his guitar. He also likes to sit in there and read (yes, we do have a sitting room) so the environment matters.

So…he shaped and polished an aluminium sheet to sit on the top of it to get rid of some of the black. It helped, but the problem remained …he hated the cooker.

On April 14 this year, the induction hob on the cooker packed up. It emitted a loud pop and went on strike. Six weeks later it had still not been mended, despite being covered by a full warranty. I won’t bore you with the prolonged and tedious bureaucratic shenanigans that went on between us, the warranty organisers, the repair centre and the manufacturer, Aga Rangemaster. It was awful. 8 weeks after it packed up, Aga agreed we could have a refund from the retailer, or a new cooker from Aga. We got a refund and now own a cooker which has some white on it. Having spent hours trawling the internet I have to tell you that 90% of freestanding cookers are black. Why is that?

Well…Dave has made a white facade that slots over the handles when the oven is not in use, which let’s face it, is usually 23 hours a day.

The aluminium sheet covers the hob when that is not in use, so now there is very little black to disturb anyone. 

The problem is that I keep forgetting about the facade and trying to open the oven door and breaking the facade, but you can’t have everything. And frankly,I am just delighted that I can stop thinking about cookers. It’s not as if I liked cooking.

Blank space

 I was going to tell you something funny today but I made the mistake of reading the news first.

Israel has attacked Iran because it didn’t like being criticised over Gaza, and it wanted to deflect the attention of politicians. It worked. Now no politician is talking about Gaza.

I mean…they weren’t actually DOING anything, but at least they were talking about it.

Medical Aid for Palestinians has been working in Gaza for 40 years, and still is.

You can donate to them here

https://www.map.org.uk/?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=21133725984&gbraid=0AAAAAChbIjIE0wmdHV_Rms_UD3PaNA5_v&gclid=CjwKCAjwgb_CBhBMEiwA0p3oOMWEnhXLEQgYu3OLb2D8RgbTL33OUOONZVVh9-crnkAnSNeaEffKeBoC-jUQAvD_BwE

Last day picture postcard

 Our last day…perfect.

En route to the beach

En route to the beach

The beach!

That’s me in the cossie - yes, I went in. 

Goodbye till next year

Afternoon tea at Perennial gardens

Evening walk - going home from the harbour

Meanwhile…

Tuesday in Pembrokeshire

 We chose a different cliff walk yesterday 

and a different bay as our destination. 

And when we got back to the car park, a friendly robin was waiting for us…

And he kept coming back!

Postcard in two parts

 On the 29th May, a group of people stood outside Parliament and read out the names of every one of the 15,613 children killed by the Israelis in Gaza in this latest conflict. 

They spoke their names one by one in front of a banner that listed the names of 1700 babies of 1 and under who have been killed in Gaza.

It took more than 18 hours.

When I read the report of this it made me cry.

Yesterday I sent an article to Dave written by the BBC journalist and editor Jeremy Bowen, who has been working in the Middle East for years and years. It was a long, balanced, rational piece, setting out the reality of what is happening and the history of it. The evidence of war crimes is there for all to see.

I explained to Dave on the phone just now that I couldn’t bear to read it. I can’t bear to read below any headline about Gaza now. It doesn’t mean I am looking away. I care as much as I have always cared, but if I did read below the headlines I couldn’t carry on with my days. I continue to raise money for the charity Medical Aid for Palestinians, I still write to my MP, sign petitions, boycott Israeli goods, do all that I can. Admittedly I can’t do much. Neither, probably, can you.

We have a Prime Minister who is intransigent, and who is deaf to the calls of the majority of the people he was elected to serve. 

Part 2

Yesterday both Liz and I were tired and decided we’d have a pottering day. We went to St David’s for a few groceries, and to see some art.

The information centre there has the prettiest car park I have ever been in. The bays are made of banks of earth and massive rocks, with wild flowers growing all over everywhere. (See pic above.)

And a footpath leads you to the centre where there is a shop, a cafe, and exhibitions.

This is the edge of the footpath…

We lapped up the art on show. This was my favourite painting. It’s called The Air We Gratefully Breathe, and is by Rosalyn Sian Evans, a local artist.

Then we drove to Whitesands Bay with the intention of walking and sitting and enjoying the sea, but when we got there, I was so tired from the last two days exploits that I sat in the car like the OAP I am, and looked at the view, and enjoyed doing nothing, immensely enjoyed doing nothing, while Liz went to walk the length of the beach.

Liz, setting off 

Me being like my lovely Gran, sitting in the car and watching the waves

In the evening we ate out at the fish restaurant in Porthgain Harbour, half a mile walk from the cottage.

It was a good day.

You can give to the British charity Medical Aid for Palestinians, that has been working in Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Lebanon for 40 years plus. Follow this link:

https://www.map.org.uk/?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=21151903911&gbraid=0AAAAAChbIjJEBAnI_SlBhcPCvqZnC35No&gclid=Cj0KCQjwjJrCBhCXARIsAI5x66VkyrhZaQ8kzHF0TVUl3VD61KSyVqRFiS8Wea4KqEiH_Bz4b1AeXowaAtCUEALw_wcB

Picture postcard 2

 We walked the two miles along the cliffs 

Looking down

to the same quiet bay, hoping to swim, but the wind was chilly and the water freezing. Still it was lovely.

Going for a paddle

I am currently gripped by The Silence in Between by Josie Ferguson…

While Liz is frequently glued to her bins…

“Oystercatcher!…Chough!…wait…….Fulmar! Fulmar!”

Picture postcard

Dear friends,

I am so lucky.

I had five days in Cornwall with my friend Het, and now I’m having six days in Pembrokeshire with Liz. Dave may be averse to holidays but I can still get away.We’re staying in a perfect cottage 1/2 mile outside Porthgain, on the coast.

Six weeks ago I pulled a ligament in my knee, and after careful rest and exercising it’s hugely better, but Dave persuaded me anyway to buy some walking poles and gave me strict instructions to be faithful about using them. I’m glad he did. We managed a long cliff walk yesterday, which included a couple of hours on the beach.

Today we hope to swim! (Or at least go in the sea in our cossies, up to our thighs.)

Love Sue

Documentary evidence of pole use for Dave 

Liz, identifying the strange grasses - it was Sea Plantain!

Liz, in her element

After my paddle