Compassion

 

Hello everyone. I hope you are ok. I am writing this in the bedroom as HOH is watching Rebus which is basically violence and upsetting scenes performed with a very strong Scottish accent. I've read quite a lot of Rebus and think it's very good. I'm afraid that doesn't mean I want to watch it in all its glory. 

It's very warm here. Well, it is now. Yesterday was our wedding anniversary so we had a walk down the Barbican for a bijou celebratory lunch. The Barbican - for those not in the know - is a harbour in Plymouth. Cobbled streets and old shops etc. What had escaped me - yet again - was that it was Pirates' Weekend. Now the idea of Pirates' Weekend is very fine. This is an old seafaring city and, on top of everything else, it's a nice little earner for the shops and cafes so Ho Ho Ho say I. We had a nice quiet lunch (Barbican Kitchen since you ask - always a pleasure, never a chore) and then wandered around to try and walk off the fish and chips. And then the heavens, as they say, opened. Full on thunderstorm - rain, lightning and thunder. Shame. Well, a shame for all the children dressed as Pirates with eye patches and plastic cutlasses. Actually, also a shame for those parents who had dressed up for their littilies and were walking around slightly self-consciously holding their child's hand and trying to stop their headscarf from falling over their eyes again. BUT, and I do understand that this is ultimately none of my business, what I don't quite get is the adults - without a child in sight who go either full-on Jack Sparrow (ugh) or even more disturbing, the ladies who come in full "serving wench" costume with only the barest whisper of a blouse keeping ning-nangs under control. This is fine (it's not fine) until it starts to pour down which makes clothes wet and results in a lot of panicky parents dragging children away to stop them getting an education that they are not quite ready for yet. 

The photo above is of me looking at FOW2's boyfriend's painting in an actual exhibition. I'm trying to give off Simon Schama vibes - you can judge for yourself if I was successful. Because he is an actual artist I don't want to show FOW2 up with my ignorance. We have always tried, not always successfully to encourage the children to be art aware. We took them to the Tate Modern in St Ives. ("When can we go to the beach?") Also to the Holbein Room in the National Portrait Gallery. ("It's very dark in here, isn't it?") and perhaps most memorable to the Turbine Room in the Tate Modern where the floor had a huge crack in it running from one end to the other. It signified the Holocaust and the crack in humanity it had caused and was very moving and on such a grand scale. ("There's a huge crack in this floor - you could do with a couple of bollards or something. Someone is going to go flying.") You do your best, don't you?

Can I rant? Can you stop me? I was listening to some chap on Radio 4 this morning honking on about Compassionate Conservatism and how that was what he stood for and that was what the Conservatives should be standing for. I'm all for compassion - we all need someone to give us the benefit of the doubt. Jesus did it all the time. Aware of people's faults and failures, he continued with his journey with them regardless. This is something different. This kind of compassion keeps you in your place. It's the sort of compassion that makes New York Zillionares hold benefits in their Manhattan Apartments for healthcare for the poor and then consistently petition against affordable healthcare. Maybe people don't want your compassion. Maybe we should be looking to develop a society where those born without the advantages of the rest of us, can expect, as their right, support to get on with their lives, to eat well, to have access to homes and to decent jobs and not accept that they will have to work three jobs and visit a foodbank regularly to feed their kids. 

There was a programme on TV this week about assisted dying. whatever your opinion on this (and I think doctors have probably been doing this forever) it was good to hear another view on it, because, in this country, it sometimes feels like if a minor celebrity is all for it, then that's good enough for us - about lots of things. Anyway, the actress Liz Carr said that she had been told by people many times that she would be better off dead. So just how are we measuring people's worth? When we are no longer in tip-top condition, is it done? I have a friend going through breast cancer treatment at the moment. She is doing well but she is like me - no spring chicken. Will there be a line drawn around our age when the gift of a few more years may not seem worth the financial cost? 

A lady got baptised this morning at church. Her life had been like an episode of Panorama. Booze, violent partner, running away with her children for safety, sleeping on the laminate floor because there were no beds in the accommodation she had been given. She made loads of mistakes, lost her way and then her life touched the life of the church. And everything started to change - not immediately in her circumstances but in the levels of being worth something that she suddenly felt. People were compassionate - not to do her a favour but because they believed God when he said everyone is worth it. People don't have to hit our marks. We don't get to decide who is worth helping. It was a good lesson for me. I have had a good day.

Consequently, I am going to bring the great anniversary celebration to an end with chip barms and prosecco. Have a great week