Rhidian Brook

This life is a gift, but not a given. 26/4/24

God is given a geography, a house, a postcode, only people cannot agree who has the title deeds, or in which house god lives. 17/5/23

I was seated at a table in a quiet area in sport centre trying to read. A man was talking loudly on his mobile, which he had on speakerphone. I waited him to realise I was there, the either didn't notice, or didn't care. I sat there wrestling with desire to say something, but also fearing his reaction if I did. Eventually heart pounding in anticipation of confrontation and escalation, I asked him as politely as I could to turn it down, without breaking off his call, the man got up, walk towards me, give me a look of contempt, as though I was the one being rude, and then left.

At time of writing this, the cricket is about to start, and I'm not sure what my thought for the day is going to be about. I'd like it to be about cricket, that way I could watch it whilst write about it.

Early this week, the children's author Michael Rosen spoken on this program of survival in Covid-19 to be on a ventilator for several weeks, he said he felt feeble and lopsided, and you could hear his voice cracking with strain and emotion of that trauma, as well as gratitude towards those who save his life. Asked if the experience has changed him, he said, it had showing him vulnerability is part of life, not separate from it.

As the government announced sweeping relaxation to lockdown rules, you can sense a wave of relief. From prime minister who had at last what sounded like good news to announce. And people picturing themselves simultaneously getting haircuts while drinking beer in pubs. It comes with caveats of course, reminders of the risks, and the urging to apply nebulous commodity of commonsense. There's even, according to some, a special strait of commonsense, known as good old British commonsense, which will give us advantage as we negotiate re-emergence.

This week I brought newspaper and takeaway coffee for the first time in 2 months. As I sat on the park bench, it's like the good old days before COVID, I felt giddy emerging in my new found freedom as someone feasting after fast. Thank you I said, gratitude for small things has coming easily recently. But the coffee had too much milk in it, and the newspaper too bi-. As I sat there reading about lift of restrictions and the people who are ignoring them, the anger people feel about this, I was taking back by something I've almost forgotten, the old paradigm of a nation stuck in shouty binary positions, divisions that for a few months at least, seemed have being replaced by kind of unity, even a vision for a different kind of world.

Wake up, breath, thank you god for breathe;

No so long ago this Coronavirus was something happening to other people in a faraway land, the footage of empty square and lifeless avenues, and people in hasmask suit was gripping the same way that movie is gripping. But it didn't seem real. As Camus wrote in his novel The Plague, people disbeliving pestilence, we tell ourselves it's a bad dream and it will pass away. But then at work you found yourself being asked if you've being to Italy in the last 14 days, you hear that local school might have to close, then you take a wide berth around someone wearing a facemask in street.