Class (un)distinction – SoCS June 18/16

June 17, 2016June 17, 2016freyathewriter 6 Comments

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“Due to overcrowding on this train, I am pleased to let all passengers know that the First Class compartments have now been declassified.”

Oh, the oft-repeated lament of the conductor on my commuter train services. It seems to be a permanent fixture of late. There’s an ongoing dispute between the crew and operating company and who comes off the worst? Of course, the passengers. Cancelled trains over and over and over again.

But then, this statement got me to thinking. No matter how often claims are made that we live in a classless society, it can’t possibly be true. Here in the UK we are staring down the barrel of the Brexit gun, with our in/out of the EU referendum taking place next week. The tone of the campaigning has made me feel very uncomfortable, to say the least, with many, many arguments focussing on very thinly disguised racism, on the part of the Leave campaign. We are not an isolationist nation (I don’t think), but that’s how the Leave campaign appear, wishing to pull up the drawbridge between here and mainland Europe, looking down on the policies and nationalities of our neighbours from a very ill-drawn and shaky high horse.

I grew up in Birmingham in the 1970s. Most of my friends were second generation immigrants – Sikh, Hindu, Muslim, Afro-Carribean. I loved the fact that our school nativity play was as multi-racial as I imagine Jerusalem would have been back then. I learned so much from my friends, our neighbours, the shopkeepers about different cultures. Yes, there were disagreements, no, it wasn’t all easy-going, but it worked.

On Thursday (yesterday as I write this) a female Labour MP was murdered in her Yorkshire constituency of Batley and Spen. She was a shining example of a good person (from what I have read), someone who believed that we all had far more in common as human beings than differences. She was passionate about humanity, about looking after people. She strongly believed that we are better off as part of the EU than outside it.

I don’t tend to write so bluntly about politics, about racism, about isolationism on this blog. But I am terribly worried about the direction the UK is taking, about the direction many other countries are taking, about the polarisation of views, about the insistence that there is no need to understand the ‘other’, because the ‘other’ can’t possibly be right, shouldn’t be listened to. Shouting loudest (something that seems to be the vast part of our politics these days) is not the way to understand, is not the way to deal with differences.

Compassion. We all have the capacity for it. Where has it gone?

Here is my early-bird entry into the lovely Linda’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday, where we are invited to write using the word ‘class’ as our prompt.

This was truly a stream of consciousness. Feelings in the UK are ugly right now, with the Brexit referendum right round the corner. It hurts. I don’t like much of what I am hearing.

Please do feel free to read – even better, take part. You never know where it might take you!

Home Fires – SoCS June 11/16

June 11, 2016June 11, 2016freyathewriter 8 Comments

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Reconnecting with times gone by, my growing up years, the comforting rhythm of a warm and welcoming family home, the transistor radio on the kitchen table providing a constant, mellow-voiced background to my life, my parents, my sister and brother.

I listen now, some voices familiar, some new, the rhythm of their families entwined with mine. Rolling countryside, lives dictated by sowing crops, milking cattle, harvesting when the weather dictates. I can see, in my mind’s eye, the sun, the rain, the laughter, the tears, as if they were mine.

It feels like coming home, this fictitious place, this Ambridge. Fifteen minutes a day, six days a week, the longest running drama in history. It’s been a part of my life for decades. Thank you, Radio 4, for reminding me of home.

Here’s my entry into the lovely Linda’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday, where this week she invites us to write anything including a word using the letters ‘mb’. I was listening to The Archers on BBC Radio’s iPlayer when I saw her prompt and it just seemed to fit. For those of you outside the UK, The Archers, a radio drama, has been running since 1950 and the first producer, who had originally worked on agricultural programmes, hoped that farmers in particular would pick up ideas on how to feed a country that was still subject to food rationing post World War Two. It continued with this heavy emphasis on education until the early 1970s, when the drama began to take precedence. Personally speaking, I still learn a lot from it, and I can hear the echo of farming news in the storylines (Radio 4 also produces Farming Today at the crack of dawn, and many of the issues discussed in this news programme are reflected in The Archers over time).

The Archers has a loyal fan base, of all ages. There is a blog here, if you are interested, and the lovely Stephen Fry has an introduction to what it’s about here.

Anyway, thank you to Linda for hosting this prompt again this week. Do hop on over to her blog to read all the other entries – they are guaranteed to be extremely varied!

Impressment – SoCS May 28/16

May 28, 2016freyathewriter 7 Comments

The pressgang pillaged our hamlet. We women, we thought we would be safe. We thought our men would be safe.

We were wrong.

I could not let them take him, my brother. he was too weak, too young, too necessary to keep Mother company. I could be spared, I could adapt. Dickon could not. He was Mother’s favourite, she and I were too different. Not a day would pass when we did not bicker, when I tended the crops one way, and she would undo all my handiwork. I could not stitch or spin or weave to her satisfaction. Dickon – he knew how to manage her, he could do all the things that I failed at so miserably.

I dressed as a boy, looked like a man, and the men of the impressment took me.

I am here now, aboard HMS Magnanime, about to go into battle with the French, yet again. I am slight, I am nimble, I can ascend to the very top of the highest mast and not succumb to the pull of the sea. I am the youngest, the best, so says the captain.

I am homesick. I am seasick. But I am glad.

Her’s this week’s entry into the lovely Linda’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt, where she has asked us to use the word ‘press’, either on its own or as part of a word beginning or ending with press as our inspiration.

The British Royal Navy was in the habit of using pressgangs to forcibly recruit people into service. For non-officers, there was no real concept of choosing a life at sea in service as a career, so the pressgangs (formally the Impress Service) would scour the country to select suitable men. Contrary to popular legend, they did not have the power to recruit anyone other than seafarers. But why let the truth get in the way of a good story!

Please do take part in Linda’s weekly prompt – you never know what will come into your mind! Please also pop along to read other entries – they will be many and varied!