Years ago I was interviewed by the KGB. I was travelling through Eastern Europe and wanted to visit the USSR, this was when the USSR really was the USSR. I had all the right papers and my entry visa which included the full names of my great grandparents. I had been through customs and had my luggage checked, I was waiting in the queue while the last checks on our tour bus were completed when I was taken out of the queue and escorted to a small room by two men wearing trilby hats and brown leather coats. Neither of them identified themselves but I knew and I was terrified, my knees locked and my throat closed up. Very politely and speaking perfect English they explained that they had noticed I had some novels in my luggage, they would like those novels and in exchange they would give me some books they thought I would enjoy. My first thoughts were all jumbled together; how did they know what I liked to read, what lovely leather coats they were wearing, the leather glowed in a rusty gold kind of way and what had "Jane Eyre", "Middlemarch" and "A Bridge Too Far" done to be confiscated. Of course I agreed, these charming handsome men could have had anything they wanted just so long as they didn't hurt me. They gave me a set of beautifully made, wonderfully illustrated books on the history of Russian art. It wasn't until I was back on the coach driving towards Moscow that I realised they had my favourite bookmark, it had been marking my place in "Middlemarch", page 126 I think.
I had completely forgotten about this strange incident and my bookmark until I was watching Channel 4 news last night. It had an extended piece on Syria including an interview with the Russian Ambassador to the UN, Ambassador Vitaly Churkin. He is fluent in English, has a sense of humour and charm and what he said opened my eyes and brought the memory about my lost novels back.
Ever since the awful fighting and slaughter started in Syria I had been mentally abusing the Russians for not taking a harder stance against Syria's policy of killing its unarmed citizens. I couldn't understand why they had blocked the UN resolutions and now because of their actions children and women had been murdered. The Russians deplore the murders but as the Ambassador explained they won't change their attitude because they see themselves as holding the line against anarchy in the Middle East. Their nightmare scenario is this; if the various plans put forward by the Security Council or Arab League were implemented how easily the whole region could fracture, whole countries splinter and the cost of oil which is already high would spiral out of control. He was exactly like those two men all those years ago so charming but completely focussed on what they wanted to do and my fear was irrelevant, regrettable but, well, that's life and you did get some books in return for a few minutes discomfort.
I finally understood some of the Real Politick everyone has been battling with, but standing by, doing nothing, mouthing platitudes while you wait for something to happen that's what I did all those years ago at that checkpoint. Instead of saying hang on a minute, don't bully me, why do you want my novels and if I give them to you I want my bookmark back I did nothing. Well, this time I was going to do what I should have done, stand up, but my question is what to do, what can I do?
I had watched the documentary entitled
"The Real Mr and Mrs al-Asad" just the other night and I am going to try and set up a petition addressed to Asma al-Asad asking her to use her influence to set up safe havens run by the Red Crescent, allow medical aid and food to get through to the people in desperate need and ask her to beg her husband to find a different path than violence in resolving this situation.
It won't get my bookmark back but I can at least try to change this poisonous situation into something resembling the ceasefire/peace plan Kofi Annan the UN Envoy wants to implement.
When I have set up the petition I will let everyone know about it.
Standing on a slag heap in the rain
I was going to write this piece in January but my disease intervened and I ended up in hospital and then I had a fall so this is the first blog of the year. Lying on a trolley for hours looking at the strip lighting they use in hospital meant that I thought more about the subject than I had before. Anyone who has read my autobiography "Pulling Myself Towards Myself" knows my family was really poor, we lived in a cottage next to the gasworks by the train line. We had two fireplaces in the house - a kitchen range and a living room fireplace both of them were always alight because in the 50s people were sold the lie that it was cheaper to keep the fire burning than to let it die out and re-light it each day. This was just a government "spin" to make sure the coal industry was supported. Every month the coal man would deliver a bag of coal but by the third week the coal shed had only a few pieces of coal left in it. So, my mother and I would push my pram through the fields that ran next to the train line and we would go to the slag heap where the steam engines emptied their fireboxes and we would pick through the slag to find pieces of coal which would then be put in the pram, when we had a full pram we would drag our load home and empty it into the coal shed. I think I must have been about 4 years old when I started doing this with my mother and I was very proud of my skill in finding bits of coal and by looking at coke I could tell if it was usable as some slag, if it wasn't burnt completely was as good as coal. I always remember these forays as being in the rain and my coat would be soaking wet, my hair would be dripping down my face and my hands were so cold I couldn't feel them but I was proud of myself for helping the family and saving us money. The first time I saw children picking over a heap of garbage in Brazil it wasn't a shock to me I had a version of this myself, what I hated was that it was still happening and nobody had any answers to this poverty. I still hate it. So, what to do? At the moment I feel as though I can't influence anything as all the political turmoil is being picked over just like rag pickers, by the IMF, the European Bank, all the other acronyms, the politicians and the plutocrats who are desperately trying to firefight the Depression, and I do mean Depression, not recession, we find ourselves in. I can't stand for more than a minute before the pain in my back and legs makes me feel faint and I have to sit down so I can't demonstrate on the streets or be part of any movement like a climate camp and I really wanted to join the Republican demos against Brenda and the Diamond Jubilee illusion! But what I can do is what I have spoken about before in a previous blog ABC, local action, caring for the people in my street (I bought a portable football net for the children who play football in the street so that instead of kicking the ball against people's windows and cars they now have a net and can play safely without adults complaining about them, kids get so much stick in this country and it only alientates them instead of engaging them in their society) and when the summer holidays start I will offer the kids tuition in improving their reading and writing for free, no one in my street can afford tutors and I was a librarian and have written 3 books and don't ask how many scripts for television. These are the ways I am trying to change things so that a new generation of children don't have to stand on a slag heap in the rain.
