Day 175

Of course, I am overjoyed that the Tories lost in Tiverton and Wakefield. Electoral pacts at the local level work. But the Tories still have a dictatorial overall majority of well over 70 seats and are trying to impose what to all intents and purposes is martial law. There is still a long way to go to get them out of power, and even when they are out of power, it will take at least a decade or two to repair the damage they have done to this country economically, physically, and reputationally. And while I support the rail strikes, and however much it pains me to say this, the unions benightedly supported Brexit, and by doing so supported the Tories in one of their main goals. I just hope that the strikes indicate a reversal of that insular and self-destructive view. Immigration threatens neither jobs nor economy nor the sovereignty the UK always had when it was part of the EU.

Enough politics. Just mark they underpin me always, even when I don’t explicitly write about them.

For now, I am

HERE

The old men stand in the bay.
They are only ankle-deep in the water,
But they stand there all afternoon,
Gesticulating at the new places
That have grown up around them,
At where the old village used to be.

They talk of their youth, and the
Early mornings out on the boats,
The girls they used to laugh with
Who became their wives; of the
New economy, and the fish place
There on the headland that their
Grandsons now catch fish for
In early morning boats.

Their skin has been beaten brown
By the unending summers across
All these years, by the heat and
Effort they spent on building up
Something that still just resembles
The old. The buses are a momentary
Inconvenience, the streets as
Narrow as ever, and they laugh at the
Drivers swearing as they reverse.

The sun has gone behind the hill now,
The one that overlooks where the
Village began and grew, and the old
Men cross their arms, let the water
Caress their feet, stiil the same water,
Still the same bay with the Church Of
Cats just over the other side, and their
Eyes light up when their wives call
Them for food, like they always did.


AGGIE’S ART OF HAPPINESS – CHAPTER 129