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Red Sky In The Morning*



Monday 15th November

Domestic update: the little brown mouse is still in the house. It's living in the oven drawer, where first it built a nest of shards of bark and a blue tit's feather, and some foil chocolate wrapper (do not ask about the blue tit, it's a painful subject, involving Tilly the junior cat). Now it has a proper bird's nest made of some chewed up strips of mop, and possibly grey wadding already borrowed from the big cushion it ruined before we were aware (alerted by Tilly's close attention). It seems satisfied now, and Tilly has lost interest (unless indifference is a sneaky ploy of hers . . .). It's definitely not a house mouse, it belongs outdoors, and we believe it is alone. We have chased it all over and behind everything, and taken the kitchen apart, and left the back door open, etc, to no avail. Currently we are resigned. It is, of course, very cute.

& so, farewell, COP26. So sorry I didn't pay much attention to you, and that I may even have jeered a bit. And the Blah, blah blah thing... which I knew must have been/be hurtful. In ways I feel I've been belabouring a good-willed, abused, disabled child, that was doing its best, and crying and grieving because it couldn't help the world and life on earth and everything --- Purely out of bitterness because there was no way I could get at the actual, impervious bad guys gathered up in Glasgow (among whom I feel I have to include the head of Brighton & Hove Council Green Party, I'm sorry to say), purely to enjoy a shindig, free food, rubbing shoulders with celebrities, and the chance of being on the telly.

CLIMATE JUSTICE, damage and loss


Meanwhile, we were marching, of course. The way you do. With the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom this time (the oldest women's peace organisation still active today, check them out on Wikipedia). Climate Justice was our theme. Climate Justice is the message. The poorest pay, the richest do the damage and cause the loss; the poorest pay, the richest carry on flying their private jets everywhere ... but what can you do? "Everybody" wants to be as much like the richest as possible, even if that only means eating a lot of fast food, and driving a car that has contracted elephantitis, everyone wants to be the richest, not the poorest. Reminds me of that Fred Pohl story* about consumerism (in which, in contrast, truly rich people had the privilege of not being forced to consume, consume, consume, and the humiliation of poverty was that you had to be fat as barrage balloon, with a car to match and oceans of fast fashion stuffing your home). But in our world, even the rich are insanely greedy. The message that there just isn't much of "Having it All" left, and that there are no "political" solutions, only painful ones, just doesn't get through.

The story is The Midas PlagueThere's a good write-up about it on Goodreads (but clearly the story is not to every Goodreader's taste)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18370319-the-midas-plague

Anyway, it was very nostalgic. How I wished I was back there in the old days, with the People's Vote people. Dominic Grieve and Anna Soubry and Caroline Lucas somewhere around. Not getting to the big screeen speeches because we were being aides (sounds grovelling, but also because we never really reckon speeches, nb) Ending up, of course, at The GreenCoats Boys for the very good beer they have . . . Knowing that in the end the Persians always get through, but still guarding our Thermoplyae, in a totally non-violent way, of course. It was so homely and local then. So harmless. Not any more.

Go without
Go hungry
Go nowhere


I wasn't kidding when I wrote that, in Grasshopper's Child, years ago. I really wasn't. But where's the utterly ruthless Emperor of China who will force us to save the world, when we need her? We haven't even got a Churchill to tell us it's blood, sweat and tears time.

*red sky photo taken at dawn, from our back door; 26th Oct

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