Delaying the Inevitable

Here’s a heart-warming childrens’ tale for the little‘uns (Any similarities with the NHS crisis are purely coincidental) The Boy Who Cried Wolf (2018 edition) Once upon a time, in a village on a hillside, there lived a little shepherd boy. He loved looking after sheep, and although he was young, he took his responsibility seriously. He was good at it, and rarely asked for help. But one day he came running down to the village crying “Wolf! Wolf! Wolf!” This was because he’d seen a massive fckn wolf. I mean, you wouldn’t make that kind of thing up would you? No messing about, it’s best to tell people about it right? It was one of the first lessons he’d learned in junior shepherding school. If you see a wolf, tell someone about it. So he rushed down the hill as fast as his little legs could carry him. But when he got down the hill, the Shepherd Council didn’t believe him. “What wolf?” they asked “There’s no wolves here”. They didn’t help him, and he had to go back up the hillside ...

The morning call to prayer drowns out the chatter, the children, the cockerels; at least for a minute. How many pleas will go unanswered today? Five times the Adhan will ring out across the camp, and they will come. Unwaveringly. Resolutely. Religiously. Who are we to judge? Stuck here in the dust between two lands. Unwanted; surrounded by enmity and apathy. Where else can you look but up, when all your terrestrial options are spent? When any solution is mired in the petty politics of race, religion and region whilst we cling to our own part of this insignificant rock, speeding through space at 600 kilometres per second. On the sprawling hilltop opposite, the sun glints off corrugated metal; a shining beacon of inequality in a world that could do better. In a world that hasn’t learned from the past; where our “never again” became “never somewhere close”. And where even that seems less achievable than ever.  So, I too look up. And pick out the ki...