175/2023

The ground of the rebellion forest
Is thick with age, Kett’s footsteps
Long gone under the layers of
Time passed, the hollows more
Shallow now than then. In the
Middle of the deepest hollow,
Under a huge oak tree, older than
Kett’s bones, there’s a piano made
From another kind of wood, its lid
Open with quiet tunes which steal
Through the undergrowth. This is
Where the ghosts gather to listen
To the unfamiliar instrument ahead
Of their time when the children
Play in the dancing shade.

R 23/06/2023 19:41

Mousehold Heath is indeed full of ghosts. You can feel them around you when you go walking over there and actually pay attention to nature rather than other people or whatever it is that’s blocking your ears through those pods so many people have nowadays. I love it up there, amongst the trees and ghosts.

I think of so much to write here (and elsewhere) during the day, but it’s all run itself into the ground of my exhaustion by the time I get round to this part of the day. The irony is I feel safest in front of this machine than most other places, and yet this is where I work and think and breathe, and it repulses and attracts me in equal measure.

One thing I thought about on my walk earlier is that the whole mess the UK is in right now can be directly attributed to Cameron and Osborne’s heartless and ill-advised austerity measures. Privileged public school boys playing at being masters without regard for the poor and ill and needy. Those who voted Brexit were voting against those measures which they felt betrayed them, voted against immigrants from anywhere (how little they were educated, those voters) because austerity was robbing them of their livelihoods. And the whole damn mess is down to those two men who at the Covid-19 enquiry this week tried to push all responsibility away from themselves. How typical of the men who just deserted their posts when the going got too tough for them. They should be in the same jail as Johnson and his mob should be in.