The Age of Abuse.

The news is full of it. Stories of women being abused by gangs of men in India and self-righteous religious bigots in other places not too far away, of children being abused by teachers, priests, family members and people traffickers, of patients being abused by staff in hospitals and care homes, and of prisoners being abused by policemen. The news is full of it, and most of it I decline to read because the headline already tells me more than I really want to hear.

And this doesn’t include the teenage girl who was randomly murdered on a bus on her way to school by a crazy man with a knife, or the other teenagers whose murders have made the news lately. Neither does it include the multitude of stories about fraud, deceit, and the systematic gagging of whistle blowers by people in positions of trust who should be above that sort of thing. And, yes, I do realise that the media likes to afford disproportionate weight to lurid stories of nastiness, but they’re not actually making them up, are they?

And then there’s the natural world. I heard three sounds in Mill Lane tonight that made me uncomfortable. The first was the sound of threat, the second alarm, and the third probably death. Together they made an unpleasant trinity for one already labouring under the weight imposed by an enforced perception of the nastier side of life.

And do you know what the irony is? All night my mind has been full of Louis Armstrong singing What a Wonderful World, when it would have been more appropriate to hear Don McClean singing ‘I could have told you Vincent, this world was never meant for one as beautiful as you.’

I think I know how he felt, but nothing I say will ever make a jot of difference. I have to get out of this pit.

Sorry for the miserable post. I grew tired of remaining silent in the face of confusion.