Let The Sun Shine

 

Summer has finally arrived. 

Let the sun shine in. 

Let my heart lift up.

May I be free from oppressions of the soul.

May you make my wisdom true.

May I overcome any adversary.

May you bless me and mine

Like you blessed the old singers of the psalms.

 

Let the sun shine in

A fragile thing

Sitting at my computer devising a quiz for the regular Saturday night Zoom quiz, when the phone goes and it’s the GP for my husband offering him the COVID jab at two hours’ notice. Maybe someone cancelled?

Zoom is such a part of my life now. Teaching on line and communicating with friends. How some of the adult students are keeping their course up while simultaneously home schooling their children is amazing. One told me there were three devices with different teachers talking out of them at the same time as she sat through the lesson.  Crazy days.

Last night I watched two episodes of Russell T Davies’ It’s a Sin.  Another virus and one that is still with us albeit much more under control. Being human: it’s such a fragile thing.

Keeping faith

Well, what a year. I have no words of wisdom or reflection to share without sounding trite.  Perhaps I  will be engaged by an idea or an event that will inspire me to blog again soon. The things I could currently hold forth on - the draining nature of online marking, not seeing my mum since March or my family in Kent for a year - will cheer neither me nor any potential readers out there.  We just have to keep on keeping on and keeping faith, whatever that faith may be. 

This video has helped keep my spirits up lately. It is a thing of beauty.

 

 

Happy Christmas

One of the things that has kept me sane during Lockdown has been our garden. Mostly tended by my husband, we added to what was here when we moved in 20 years ago. It's not a very planned or orderly garden but it attracts wildlife: birds, bees and butterflies.  for a few years we had hedgehogs but, sadly, they moved on.
We enjoy it very much.

A work of fiction

Once upon a time a young dramatist sat in her tiny cubby hole and  created  an epic state of the nation drama.

Taking  inspiration from her old fashioned literary  heroes, Shakespeare and Dickens  she created a government chief advisor, overflowing with  Machiavellian shiftiness and a total lack of conscience. The advisor worked for a  Prime Minister who had  zero sense of social responsibility and  who had perfected the art of  saying  one thing while letting everybody know he  believed another. She decided to place these two characters against the background of  an unforseen national emergency.

She went on to create a number of other characters including a Chief of Police in a Northern County and his retired predecessor, the advisor's wife and elderly parents, a new leader of the opposition and a well know political pundit who fronted his own Sunday morning  TV show. At the centre of the drama were a couple of political researchers from this show,  one who grew up on a council estate and the other whose dad was a member of the House of Lords. These two characters engaged in a passionate sexual relationship before they realised they were not right for each other but not before they discovered the Prime Minister's advisor was in the pay of a powerful foreign government. This scandal was the final nail in the coffin of the increasingly insecure government.

Following this scandal there was a general election and the shiny new leader of the opposition became the new Prime Minister to the delight of the nation and the chagrin of the far left of his party who immediately started slagging him off as a Capitalist patsy. The penultimate scene showed  one of  the leading lights on the far left of the new Prime Minister's party  - and his biggest critic  - being approached by a representative of the 'shady foreign government'.

The drama ended with the post script 'two years later', where the audience saw the Prime Minister warmly welcoming his new advisor, the former left wing critic.

To the young dramatist's delight, the drama was accepted by Channel 4 and was their most critically acclaimed drama in over 20 years. She was  hailed as a latter day Alan Bleasedale and compared to David Hare. She was  taken on as a writer in residence at the National Theatre.

I asked my mum what she thought of the drama  'It was all right I suppose,' she replied 'but it was all a bit far fetched really.'