People are truly good...

ednesday 27th January, 2021

"I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart". These diary words of Anne Frank fill me with admiration. I think I agree with her. In spite of the horrors of dictatorships, abuse, wars, violence etc there is a deep goodness in the world. We have to be real and note the evil also.

As a friend once told me ' I know a woman who killed to protect her children. She also stole and cheated and robbed. Would you do the same? We fight wars to protect our countries and principles, are not our children more important? ' I admire those who self sacrifice, those who are pacifists, those who are prisoners of conscience as well as those who keep a conscience while in the military or in places of peace keeping. I try so hard not to judge yet I do. I hope that I would be able to sacrifice myself for another but I do not want to be put to the test.

I have been reading, as I was yesterday, Eliot's Waste Land. These words hit me:

" My nerves are bad tonight. Yes, bad. Stay with me

Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak.

What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?

I never know what you are thinking. Think.

I think we are in rats' alley

Where the dead men lost their bones "

Last night was difficult. My landlady fell down. I had gone to bed or was in the process and she somehow while getting up off a sofa fell. I heard this horrendous crying and screeching. I got downstairs and got her up and sat her down. She was in tears and mildly hysterical, which is understandable. I calmed her. I wondered if she had broken anything but it seemed not. So I took her to the bathroom and then put her to bed. I did not sleep well and woke with butterfly nerves in the tummy. But she was up at 7am to go on a Virtual trip to Kyoto. She was bruised, still shaken but functioning. I was a semi wreck. I needed to get out for a short walk so went to the Post Office and to the Charity food donations from local companies...food about to expire in use by dates.

People are still frightened of coming out. The food is free but I took the remaining sourdough breads to freeze and gave a donation to the Charity. Many cans not taken eventhough the local foodbank is overwhelmed. It is fear of the virus and the conflicting rules and regulations and the news re hospital numbers.

When I arrived back I was informed of the doom and gloom of the world and how today was the last dry day for over a week. So after a lunch of bread and a whole over ripe goats' cheese I set off. I went further and for longer than usual. I met or passed by many with whom I am becoming familiar. One of them is the son of our pharmacist and I have met him at Concerts in which his Father sings. He has a real flair for style and wears extraordinary trousers of all sorts of colours and designs. Today I told him how much I envied and admired his fashion. He seemed thrilled. He told me he was on furlough and walking was his release of pent up frustration. He hoped to get in to fashion somehow.

Then I saw a friend in a car I had not seen for weeks. She stopped and was on the way back from a funeral. Finally I bumped in to ( I do not mean literally as all these meetings are distanced and masked ) a lady whose grand son said he would cut off the heads of litter droppers. He has read of the Red Queen in Alice and was only 7! I asked if he had cut anyone's head off. She replied that he had not but that he had bought himself a litter grabber! The message spreads!

Finally the daughter of the landlady came with fat balls....I am hoping to be part of the RSPB bird count this coming week end. She also brought some borsch. Most vitally she brought a battery and helped change the fire detector battery which has been emitting screeching noises for a week or so.

So that is my day in a nutshell. A whole gamut of feelings and happenings. I also have read Carretto and noted his take on prayer. I am too tired to let my mind spin at the moment so I shall have a short siesta and read a whodunnit novel and take myself in to the escape mode. I am not thinking but my nerves are better and settled.