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.