I'm grateful to Stephen, commenting on my last post, for a fascinating link about Gavin Peacock, a former Chelsea footballer. I recommend it. I guess he would disagree with Bill Shankly, the late great Liverpool manager, saying football is much more serious than life and death. Peacock reckons there's something more lasting and more satisfying than football glory, and is taking radical steps to pursue it. (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/premier_league/article616409)
One of my minor joys here is seeing mums from this estate setting off after 3 o'clock and returning half an hour later with their children from primary school. I'm just so glad for those children that they have that routine and, I assume, security with it. I suspect there are subconscious memories buried in me of my school days which ended in the seemingly ever present welcome of my mother. I'm sure that survival is possible without, but I'm as sure that it makes for childhood happiness. I guess dads would do too, though maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but I think there must be something about the person who's carried, nursed and fed you.
By the way, rumour has it that a little egret has been spotted in Grove. (They're the white heron-like bird which I associate with the south of France and Egypt, which have been moving their habitat northwards - ? a sign of global warming.) Meanwhile a less welcome migrant has landed in Britain, I hear tonight, in the form of swine 'flu. One would hope that the message would penetrate rather thick human skulls that we CANNOT manage the world's forces (whether 'flu or finance) on our own, and that we'd spend some time reflecting on our limits and admitting, like Gavin Peacock, that we'd do better to live in reference to the divine.
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