The sea was limply swilling around the bay

In the snow-bitten air

As the Dorset mummers prepared to put on their play.

It seemed everyone had stopped to hear.

The thrumming tambours and bashing of tin cans 

Rowdy along the quiet Sunday seafront,

A beer-induced ruddiness spreading a breathy good cheer

The ancient, outlandish, ridiculous flummery

Flashing through a crowd, hungry for all that.

"Here come I, Old Father Time" cried a man in a battered yellow hat

And a soft, beautifully intricate kimono

That once must have been a treasure.

A man in horns, tights and leather flying jacket

Danced among the bollards

Shouting “Keep off me schmatter it cost a packet!”

As a loping woman in fairy lights and boots

Waves her violin and lisps "Give room, give room"

And give me room to rise
And I'll show you such activity
On this merry Christmastide.

Activity of youth, activity of age

Such activity has never been seen

Or acted on a stage.

And by the bus stop, clad in black and fur

The slasher prowled and growled, delighted no doubt, 

By the thought of slashing in his Dorset burr

And terrifying children.

A man in garish Crimbo jumper topped by crown of green

Starts the crowd a dancing (like he didn’t think he’d be seen).

And a man in a nearby guesthouse watching for snow

Sighed a sigh of centuries, as he gazed from his window

Reviewing how his year had passed,

Of what he had to let go

And wondered if his broken heart

Missed him much, or no?

Could he be a better father, uncle, brother

Left without heart amidst all his deep sorrow?

As the bells and flashing lights 

Of the merry mummers passed

Like a cluster of crows

Stoking up the fires of their bravado 

With chaotic percussion.

The man grabbed his coat and set to follow.

And in the warmth of a seaside pub,

Rough and sticky with spilled cheer and blood

The ancient folk tale revealed its own pain

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen all

And a merry Christmas to you all
I am a noble doctor, both stout and good

With my created hand I can purge the blood

Cure the stitch, the itch

The palsy or the gout

All pains within, all pains without,

Silenced by a curvaceous Saint George

Wielding her mighty light sabre 

(from a stall along the prom)

Decrying the crook and climbing on tables

Niftily saving her ample breast from 

Deftly clutching fingers.

Heroically, rising from legend and myth

With the promise of rescue, healing, 

O hold your hand

O hold your hand

And let these quarrels fall

For here we get our bones all smashed

For no cause at all.

And the men at the bar, the women by the fruit machine

Eyes misted with memory and unfulfilled dreams

Slapped their hands, stomped their feet, and joined in with a roar

Because wasn’t this merriment what Christmas stood for?

And the man from the guesthouse, scrolled through his phone

As if Christmas was in there, as he joined with the throng.

Impromptu caroling, all drunken and stout

Erupted as the mummers stealthily saw themselves out.

No asking for dues, no shaking of hats, they left -

Back to the hospital, back to their shifts

Back to a Christmas impossibly lived.

Christmas Mummers

© JulietB

Here in the UK we have been suffering a chaotic conservative government that keeps appointing Cabinet Ministers who espouse deeply extremist views, or whom are simply not intelligent enough to hold a position of power without exposing their ignorance and vices to the general public. Thanks to social media, and the digital highway the general public in this day and age are far less tolerant of stupidity and malfeasance when the perpetrator is having much longer lunch breaks in all expenses paid in-house restaurants, and getting away with 'stuff' that others can't, simply by dint of being an 'MP in Westminster'. Our latest 'sacking' of a cabinet member is our wholly 'unsuited to the job' Suella Braverman (1), who despite being the daughter of refugees had taken on a hard-line stance as UK Home Secretary (2) on 'stopping the boats' (3) (refugees fleeing war, or political, moral or religious persecution and crossing international waters in unsuitable craft, often exploited by criminal gangs, in order to take sanctuary in more tolerant countries). She also made headlines by declaring that people who were homeless had made a 'lifestyle choice' (5). Colleagues and senior party members advised her to not discuss such complex issues and to use wiser language but Suella refused to budge and ultimately this was her downfall. She was sacked on Nov 13th, 2023 in a a Cabinet shuffle, following comments made to the media that stirred up the far right and led to ugly confrontations in London during the Remembrance events at the Cenotaph (4).

The Lifestyle choice comment touched me deeply. I recently chatted to a man who came to fix my heating, who told me that he tried to steer clear of politics and get on with living his life. I replied that I felt, as a woman in a patriarchal society, that I had a duty to get involved with politics, otherwise people would make detrimental decisions on my behalf and I would have no voice in the making of those decisions and subsequently less control over not just my own life but over my own body. We had already discussed how he nearly lost his wife in childbirth and how that had affected him.

I don't suppose anyone other than those with an eye to supreme power and megalomania really want to get involved in politics, its a dirty, egotistical world, however as so many enlightened women of the twentieth century have discovered, it's a vital step in giving a voice to the repressed, supressed and downtrodden. Sadly, that clearly doesn't mean that female politicians aren't subject to the same corrupting influence that power and status exherts. But is homelessness a lifestyle choice? Anymore than poverty is? No, I truly think not. I think that a capitalist driven state means the few exploiting the many, that a majority of people are driven into poverty, homelessness, debt, and vice not through choice but by design. The design being government policy influenced by moneylenders, banks and business who profit and exploit the lack of education, ignorance and naievite of people who are trying to live more simply, or whom are more susceptible to undue influence. "There but by the grace of God, Go I". In 2020 Cambridge University press published :-

Stating,  "Many have depicted a steady rise in lifestyle politics. Individuals are increasingly using everyday life choices about consumption, transportation, or modes of living to address political, environmental, or ethical issues. While celebrated by some as an expansion of political participation, others worry this trend may be detrimental for democracy, for instance, by reducing citizens to consumers. Implicit in this common critique is the notion that lifestyle politics will replace, rather than coexist with or lead to, other forms of political participation. 

In dealing with lifestyle choice purely from a political perspective the article echoed something deeper in the fabric of society, that politics was in fact, pre-determining 'lifestyle'. I am not sure that 'choice' is anything more than a throw-away add-on giving the phrase more resonance because increasingly, 'choice' has become a luxury not a right. As government policy undermines, throws in to chaos through its refusal to accept legislature and blindsides any 'human rights' that hitherto have given the poor, the disenfranchised and the vulnerable an opportunity to improve their circumstance, protect their dignity and claim their human rights, there has been an erosion of quality of life, of societal expectation and of access to basic human needs - shelter, food, protection.

These are dangerous times, and any government culpable in the destruction of the roots of a compassionate and humane society, should be held to account. The line between criminal negligence and poor governance has long been blurred by this conservative government and the fall-out is yet to come. Lifestyle choice is not, and never should be an appropriate term to use in reference to people who have been dispossessed or disenfranchised.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suella_Braverman Braverman was born in Harrow, Greater London, and raised in Wembley.^[2] She is the daughter of Uma (néeMootien-Pillay) and Christie Fernandes,^[3] both of Indian origin,^[4][5] who immigrated to Britain in the 1960s from Mauritius and Kenya respectively.

2. The secretary of state for the Home Department, more commonly known as the home secretary, is a senior minister of the Crown in the Government of the United Kingdom and the head of the Home Office.^[3]The position is a Great Office of State, making the home secretary one of the most senior and influential ministers in the government. The incumbent is a statutory member of the British Cabinet and National Security Council.

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugee_crisis

4. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/nov/11/suella-braverman-accused-of-fuelling-far-right-violence-near-cenotaph

5. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/nov/04/fury-as-braverman-depicts-homelessness-as-a-lifestyle-choice

I’ll never forget how it felt, when you were lying in the cardiology unit, the wires and monitors, the dressing over your heart, the vulnerability exposed like a raw wound.  Your heart rate spiked— I don’t know exactly what caused it, a call, a text? but I felt the change, it crackled in the air with one cruel nurse almost ready to physically propel me from the room and the nurse hastily hustled me out. When I was invited to come back in, something had changed, your girlfriend had called?  Do you know at that point, when they walked me out that they asked me if I really was your wife? How was I supposed to answer? Legally yes, if you had died that morning  (and how lucky you were that you didn’t), it would have been me that picked up all the unfinished pieces. The endless paperwork, the bureaucracy, dressing the open sores of grief and sorrow. I hate that I read body language, ignorance would have been so much easier. I hated the nurses for being complicit. I left feeling ashamed that despite my compassion I was being sidelined, discarded. Those twenty years suddenly counting for nothing, nothing at all. Meaningless. I'm older, uglier, I don't get the sympathy vote.

Did you phone her when you thought you might be dying? Did you wish you hadn’t called me? And at any point when you were lying in that hospital did you think how it might have been for me when my father was dying? When I came back from all those attritional visits to see my uncle? When you asked me to pop in and visit your colleagues wife, and I could see, she too was dying ?- Oh, that was the biggest tragedy of them all, given her youth, her humility, and her deep, enduring love for her two young children. 

The next day, when I arrived, having checked with you that you wanted me to come, I was accosted again by a staff member. You had two visitors, you shouldn't have so many. For a moment I thought maybe it was her, but no she'd come the day before - after me. Poor ward staff, how often does this happen, how clear were you? After an hour of trying to find a car-parking spot, I didn't care. I was the wrong person to attempt to lecture, I chucked your next-door neighbours out, they are complicit too. I was past caring, the passive aggressive car-park chaos still burning on my retina - everyone's need was as great as the next persons - no prisoners were being taken, it was a miracle there wasn't a four-car pile up, or maybe there was and I sailed past it - eventually channeling my inner-goodwill hunting-vibe.

Did you ever step out of your self-centred zone and wonder in all the mess and pain after my father died whether you’d really done right by me? Or were you too busy, masking the guilt at the relief you felt and relishing the thought of new possibilities? When you discovered me, alone in the chaos of my fathers house, after a brief hospital interlude myself, having noted the washing-up needed doing — did you feel anything other than the fact you were late for a hot-date with your girlfriend? Did you feel one iota of consideration for my needs, or was your “I’ll help you get rid of some of your father’s junk next weekend” sufficient?…Some weekends are a very long time coming aren’t they? 

As I left your hospital bedside today you said “I’ve missed you”. Really? Or have you missed the twenty years of comfort and nourishment, as I withered. I don’t know. I’ve given up trying to walk in your shoes, it’s not good for me. It hurts me. At the Hospital today, we talked about families. Yours couldn’t drop me me fast enough, I wasn’t sure about calling your parents, was it my place? I called your sister-in-law, when she remembered who I was, she, at least, was compassionate. Your father called me, a whole twelve months and some…too late, asked me how I was before moving on to you. Another question that was suddenly too hard to answer. 

You told me it was my ‘choice’ to leave. I’m not sure self-preservation is a choice, it’s more a visceral need to find high ground, a deep primal cry for help and fear, a lot of fear. I’ve been terrified, every day for the last nineteen months. Every step of that time, I haven’t known what was ahead. You made so many assumptions when I left, and today you said, “we probably need to talk in the New Year”. Talking never seems to have solved anything at this murky end of our relationship. Generally, I listen, you assume, re-fine the narrative that makes you feel more comfortable with yourself, and I go unheard as you listen, but don't hear. Does assuaging your guilt make it better? Even at a moment of life and death, you manage to break my heart. Just when I thought it couldn’t break further.  I will never forget these past two days - the profound emotion of someone you love facing death, (THAT is an emotion I’ve experienced before, it still hits hard). The setting aside of blame, hurt, history, to be compassionate and caring in someones time of need, and then the thunderbolt shift, the realisation that you are existing in a liminal space where you have no place, the utter agony of that loneliness compounding ones loneliness. You let me down, I didn’t deserve that.  I will not allow you to hurt me any more.

Will I regret writing this? I hope not. Every now and then,  I will sit with these words, and as time passes I hope I will be able to edit and re-shape them. May life bring me sweetness to dull the bitter.

Addendum:

The year is not yet done and I have had a final kick in the teeth. And that blow has taught me something that perhaps I knew, intuitively - but if anyone else reads this and can pass it on for the greater good, then please do. 

It is this: 'Don't start a new relationship before finishing the old one" it causes untold hurt, deep, deep, pain - to a multitude of people beyond those involved in the immediate relationship. Weakness, immaturity, is no excuse. 

I bought two new books back with me from Cornwall. The Salt Path purchased in the Falmouth Bookshop and Sea Fever bought in the National Maritime Museum Cornwall. I started Sea Fever one stormy evening in Maenporth, even reading bits aloud to my youngest (who probably wasn't listening) as its various accounts, facts and famous fiction about the sea are so brilliantly drawn together, chimed with a more recent re-telling of a sea journey my daughter's friend had made from Norway to Ipswich, which had challenged the crews' wits in survival against the sea. 

The Salt Path is something else, a story of lived experience that is incredible, heart-wrenching, almost impossible to contemplate and yet, it is beautiful and funny and compelling. Ray Winns account of her walk along the south coast path with her husband Moth having lost almost every material thing including their family home through the treachery of a friend, is a rite of passage.  Surviving on barely any money, with Moth's ill health looming large on their horizon Ray captures the geography of the SWC and evokes the wildness and romance of the counties Ray and Moth pass through while facing hardship and homelessness. She broaches the concept of homelessness that challenges preconceptions and asks the reader to consider the morality of a society that still refuses to tackle homelessness with any genuine understanding for its causes, or compassion for its victims. There is a vulnerable faith in the kindness of strangers in this journey, as humour and hazard walk hand in hand in this extraordinary book. And what a gift, to know such an enduring love, that alone is reason enough to read this book.

What is blocking the heart of my country?

I walk in its verdant valleys, that dress the horizon.

I trace the twist and tumble of its streams and its rivers, 

I stumble through its forests, ancient and knowing,

But cannot find the source.

At sea, I crouch in the conning tower as we sweep around this isle

Surveying subterranean roots of majestic cliffs for rock fall, 

The dim sea bed for fault lines.

There is a suffocating malaise, a slimy bloom

It slips through nets refusing to be caught and spreads like fear

And the sun breaks, across the hills and sweeping downlands, solemn granite mountains

Pale marshes and the sandy flats, as the long shadow reaches.

I dream of the wind whining in the oak barn, lifting the loose straw,

And the gale smashing flotsam against the old seawall.

The slowing beat of the earth beneath us, as planets reel in distant galaxies

Has not yet silenced the Robin at my window, or the hum of bees on the lavender bush

But the sluggish pulse that chills the sun, and gathers cloud, is rattling bones

In the ivy covered churchyard, and causing the earth to moan.

I found this book in a second-hand bookshop. Despite its publishing date of 1937 (second revised edition), it is full of sage advice and advertisements for 'must have' gadgets including the Hamble Line Passer - still a useful tool for hitching a line to a stable object from a distance. The author W. Eric Wilson, D.S.O with assistance from Admiralty Chart Agent J.D. Potter based in the Minories in London and their neighbours Imray, Laurie, Norie & Wilson Ltd., the oldest Nautical Publishers in the world (or so they claimed) who published this hefty tome in their printing works in Hackney, all conspired to produce this detailed guide for the serious sailor.

Guides, in all forms, are there to assist in times of trouble, need, or in expectation of either. A firm hand on the forearm, a gentle nudge in the desired direction from the 'you don't have to do this the hard way, allow me to enlighten you' folk who have gone before. We navigate our lives making good, bad, and indifferent choices. Guidance is always worth listening to, in navigational terms experienced guidance is essential. Like sea shanties and folk songs, handed down by word of mouth for centuries, changing with the times but doggedly true to its original form. The Pilot's Guide is a sensible practical tome on the vagaries of the English Channel, of necessity it must be trustworthy and reliable, lives depended on it. 

W.E.W could surely not conceive of a modern-day Channel full of super-tankers and people in barely sea-worthy inflatables, and the seasonal influx of top-heavy gin-palaces, and I wonder if he, or J.D. Potter or Messrs Imray, Laurie, Norie & Wilson, gave thought or conversation to a time when printed maps would be digitised, along with instruments so that maps became less important and computer screens plotted courses and pinged against satellites to guide sailors around the English Channel. 

There is a reason why sailors for the most part are easygoing. they've learnt to make and read signals, to predict the weather, how best to make an approach, judge depth, understand the tides, and perhaps most useful of all how to use a compass including variation and deviation, and having absorbed all that understood, practised and reflected on that wealth of seafaring knowledge, a good sailor might also digest that cautionary truth as expressed thus by W.E.W "Discretion must be duly exercised in the use of all Sailing Directions as aids to navigation, and they should not be regarded as infallible, as a little consideration will show. A chart or a book may be accurate at the time of publication, but it may become unreliable in some particulars owing to the changes in shoals and their constant and numerous alterations in Lights, Buoyage, etc." In effect, guidance is just that, the sum of someone else's experience but the world is not constant, it is ever changing. For the Pilot amongst us, it pays to be humble in plotting a course, to stay calm and prepared, and to meet the unexpected with the same assurance in which you meet all challenges, with a weather eye to the horizon and a quick arrival at the most practical solution.