Going high

A tetchy text from our next door neighbour, who has to wash his cars because of dust from our building work. The same neighbour whose house for the first two years of our stay was a building site, and we politely put up with months of dust, plastic waste, tools, etc coming over the fence, not to mention the constant noise and inconvenience. It made us both very angry.  I consciously had to calm down for the good of my health. He texted a bit later more politely and we replied to that one, deciding like Michelle Obama to go high when they go low. 

I wanted to have some morning calm to write in, but I felt to irritable, so after speaking to Mum, I went off for an early walk. Seven miles in total today. I am now on a streak of fifteen days, and in the last seven days have walked over 40 miles. It feels good to be getting back to my old habits, and I am listening to audiobooks as I go, and my knee which had a moment a few months ago is holding up. Still on the biography of Muriel Spark, which I am enjoying. Spark is portrayed as a bit of a handful as a person, but fiercely independent and strong minded and self assured. She worked for a while as the chair  of the Poetry Society, and editor of the Poetry Review at the age of 29, but was forced into resigning by the enemies she made there.  

Home and Lorraine came back from her rounds and we sat outside under the umbrella. Later we made the blackberry jam. I was convinced for a while it hadn't set properly, but it had. The jam tastes extraordinarily fresh and lovely. Started watching The Wolf of Wall Street this evening. Stopped watching about halfway through, and may pick up again. 

Meanwhile flags continue to sprout. Apparently lots were put up last night, along the main road into Seaford, but were all taken down this morning. I'm finding this tide of brainless nationalism truly alarming. The local Seaford facebook site is full of posts condoning it. The flags are provocations, intended to be hostile and divisive. Bafflingly, the Labour government, even with its majority is ineffectual and seems like a rabbit in the headlights at the rise of the right, which is using the Nazi playbook of finding scapegoats, this time refugees, economic or otherwise, crossing the channel. Attacking the refugees is of course legitimised: they are not supposed to be here, the narrative is they come over here and are put into hotels, given lots of money and treated better than the poor English. One post I saw just now conflates NHS waiting times with the arrival of refugees. It's madness. You hear people sprouting phrases now that they have been fed on social media. People who don't think decking towns out in flags appropriated by the far right is a good idea, are branded as 'mentally ill'.  

The flags are a symbol of emboldened bigotry,  I almost pity the people who have been so poisoned and enabled by social media. The demise of the country is blamed not on Brexit or Covid or Austerity or climate change, but on wretched people arriving by boat. My cynical hope is that the weather turns, this will change too. England often gets rioty when its hot. When it starts to rain, English apathy will hit. 

Below I cross the road, and walk up this alleyway, which takes me off into the blue yonder; two snaps in Seaford Cemetery (its toilet is useful on a long walk) showing the parched grass.