The Journey (by sarah)

The weekend was complicated - we were down in London visiting family and Alaric was due to fly to the US meaning me and the girls would be heading back on the train - everything was pre-booked.

It was an early start which included Dad cooking pizzas for me and the girls to take on the train and having made us bottles of water in the freezer etc...

Al saying goodbye involved lots of hugs and snugs and in truth we weren't far behind him in leaving the house. Dad gave us a lift to Upminster Station - I had thought the Fenchurch Street Line did not run at the weekend but it did and we would have been in plenty of time for it... if I hadn't had to get Jean a ticket for the underground and the queue was pretty extensive!

The next wasn't for ages so we bought some crisps and drinks for our high adventure and went and sat on a District Line Train. We ate pizza that was still hot and due to a chance question by Mary on Gidea Park we ended up deep in the throws of family history which took us pretty much all the way through to zone one!

Now I had been in London on Wednesday and Thursday - I knew the train lines were broken but what with the head injury and things I just kind of forgot (not about the fire but just about trains). I hadn't even registered that the train was only going to South Ken. meaning we ended up at South Ken with me and Jean trying to work things out... back on the district line we went to Embankment were on the way in Mary had asked why everyone was getting off :/

Mary was beginning to get restless - we'd eaten our lunch and the trains were getting more packed so I told her a story - How Mary Became the Gap Toothed Monster! There was giggling and fluroshes added by her toothlessness herself.

I was a bit stressed - I was already struggling with understanding the tannoy and being able to read the signs and Jean was trying her best but just doesn't know the system - between the two of us we managed to get on the Bakerloo Line - all three of us sat on two seats - many were standing because it's the underground. It was hot and airless and Mary began to fret - we put the drinking water on her head and assured her there would be ice cream at some point in the journey.

Oh yeah on the District Line she'd broken out in uber energy and shimmied up the hold on to pole. Fidget Spinner was for the win for getting her to sit down - Jean tried to scare her into sitting by saying trains crash - I snapped at Jean because when you are on the train you don't really want to think about that or at least at that point I didn't.

And the train stopped in the tunnel, the District Line had done this lots too. Mary was excited that we were actually underground. We got into Paddington with 20 mins until our "big train" so we bought ice creams - I couldn't work out the self serve till - I couldn't work out which ticket got us through the barrier - I did get coffee.

I am paranoid about travel so had given myself an extra almost 2 hrs to get across London - good job really!

We found our seats, terfing the poor welsh dude who fortunately got another seat - the train had people packed in the vestibles which made me feel bad when I had to ask them all to move so I could go a loo! But I had been on packed trains for several hours at this point.

The girls ate their ice creams, we had little chats with the welsh guys and the guy next to us offered to lend Jean a charging cable for her phone which was lovely even though we declined.

This is my fidget spinner:

It kept Mary quiet long enough for me to reset my brain a bit though her and Jean fought over who was going to get to play with it and Jean dismantled it which grumped me!

I love the fidget spinner - Alaric bought it for me - it is a beautiful thing.

We then played the Story Telling Game - were we each say a bit of the story and pass it on - Jean tries to pull the story into scifi and Mary always adds magic and fairies and I have to thread it into something coherant - they often take unexpected twists and Mary really enjoys telling them DRAMATICALLY!

And she had an audience.

We got through to Swindon on origami - Mary loves origami so spends ages folding her own shapes (which she then tries to teach you how to fold!) and I had also made some little modules she can fit together to make bigger structures including a snake 🙂

I was pleased with myself as I managed to fold a tetrahedron or three sided pyramid - I am working on modular origami at the moment as I wish to use it in various workshops.

And then we were at Swindon... were there were no connecting trains :/ There had been nothing about this at Paddignton - as none of the other passengers knew anything about it either! The poor station lady had to explain over and over again the two ways we could all get to Gloucester, Stonehouse etc... depending on where we were going. It would be faster to go to Bristol and get a train back from there - we opted for the bus/coach because it was half an hour till the next train and I wasn't sure I could cope with more changes and platforms and I don't have good previous with getting back from Bristol when tired etc... having found myself heading "up north" on several occassions and the notable time I ended up in Wales.

A fellow passenger - a lady who spoke very little English made sure I knew which bus to get on with the children which was lovely.

There was aircon on the coach - we blasted ourselves with it and ate nibbles... and got stuck in traffic and Mary had a melt down arching her back and thudding into the seat. I managed to calm her down though she wasn't really quiet at all for this journey until she flopped her head on me and dozed a bit. To be fair by this point of the journey I kind of wanted to join her and Jean had retreated into her iPad.

The walk home was hot - there was more water poured on heads and Mary had her second melt down when she realised we were walking home via the "stone bridge" as she just did not want to go that way. She was throwing a massive wobble shouting and flouncing and then I said "do you need a hug" and she nodded and climbed up me for a hug and... burst into tears... she wanted her daddy back.

We all walked together - Jean had been going to go on a head but a) realised she had a "kids" rucksack on and b) felt Mary needed big sis to hold her hand. We bought second ice cream from the corner shop and were home.

Refugee Week and Poetry (by sarah)

I found this podcast which explores the refugee crisis etc... through poetry and musical expression. It contains an amazingly beautiful and sad Wade in the Water which has been cleverly adapted. For those of you who don't know the history of Wade in the Wader it was part of the Slave/Freedom Train in the US before the full abolition of slavery (and in some cases even after it). It was a sung code as were a few other songs.

This is something else that has been breaking my heart over the last few years - when we were trying to adopt (on hold now due to head injury) I felt I was doing something to help because we'd been told that refugee kids were the largest group and I don't care where a child comes from a child is a child and I just want to keep as many safe as possible weather from here or abroad. But obviously that didn't happen and now I sit in my house with spare rooms... and all any one tells me is that it would have been dangerous for my kids :/

I wonder if the households that took in the evacuees and the jewish kids in the second world war had the same sort of issues?

A few years ago Neil Gaiman made this video whilst visiting a refugee camp and highlighted the efforts that are being made and also the plight. He like many in the UK is descended in one branch of his family from refugees - pretty much anyone is going to find foriegn links if they actually bother to look and investigate and just ask. Many families have tended to keep that sort of ancestory secret but not all.

You can read his write up about here on the UN Refugee Agency website.

Currently I am putting together some more political poetry pamphlets/zines just my poetry at the moment - within which I have a few poems about refugees. This one is called The Journey and shamefully I can not even remember which group or news report it is about because there have been so many - so many little bodies and big bodies and just people - washed up along the shores - lives gone and wasted.

A Journey

The journey was across the water
And was flimsy with grief
The crowds swarmed
Desperation palatable
In the tang of stale sweat

Grey waters ebbed to black
Hiding those who could not make it
Or were Unwanted
Thrown to the cold placid stillness
Breath gone

Bodies bloated and rotting
Effluent choked to the fish
So they could no longer
Nibble the corpses
And still the people came
Fleeing, frightened
Seeking sanctuary
That so many of them
Would never reach
The waters filmed with grief

.....

Years ago now I remember sitting in the Wilson Museum and Art Gallery at an event where the guest poet was a refugee - I wish I could remember the mans name - he was seeking asylum at the time - in many places poetry is outlawed, poets especially political poets are actually risking their lives for something that gets seen as "a bit prissy" in this country.

I think that for next year I will try and get the Gloucester Poetry Society to organise an event.

For more information on Refugee Week go here.

More Death :'( (by sarah)

Last night I awoke crying - my brain had only just worked out why the trainlines we wanted weren't working - it had been a long day getting from Essex through London and out to Gloucester with the final walk home. I should have realised as I was there on Wednesday and knew those lines were shut then but... head injury - Jean was having to read signs and things for me in the end.

Also I know too many firefighters, nurses and police, I know too many people in council flats/housing, I over heard conversations I wish I hadn't on Wednesday - I can't bring the dead back - life is so easily snuffed out - we are so vulnerable. Horrible accidents, natural disasters and disease... you'd think we'd all huddle together against the nightmares.

The fire would have claimed more lives if it hadn't been for Ramadan, if the diversity of the city was less more people would have died. People were up observing their religion and so spotted the danger and warned others.

But still I awake to the sicken news that a van has ploughed into people outside a Mosque, more senseless death, more retribution agains the many for the actions of the few. More people killing people when we are all on the edge of annhilation anyway.

There are horrors happening all around the world - so much of it and we only hear a fraction... often I can not cope with it all - all the pain and hurt and grieving - the utter utter waste of life, of mind. And this time it is my home. London.

Grief is out pouring in the Capital - that is what the "riots" are, people feel powerless and they are angry and rightly so.

And then this... this attack on people going to pray.

I feel sick.

I Suck at Father’s Day (by sarah)

So today is Father's Day - me and the girls kind of forgot - to be fair we kind of forgot about Mother's Day too though I think we squeezed in a meal or something - none of us could really remember it was too busy a day.

On this Father's Day Alaric left early morning to get to his flight for America and my Dad cooked me and the girls pizza to have as our packed lunches on the train - he then drove us to the station and I had completely forgotten :/

I also messaged them both last night demanding we all write a novel together... yeah I fail at Father's Day.

London’s Burning (by sarah)

London is reeling - everyone knows someone who lives in a Tower Block - London has a lot of Tower Blocks full of families - the fire by Latimer Road has shook the foundations of the city - and as the situation unfolds it looks more and more like we may not be able to tell how many have died, the fire spread in a way that was unexpected due to the cladding causing issues with people following the advice and how fire services initially reacted and advised people.

Fire fighters risked their lives and are still currently working - many of them have been injured but they kept going to get as many out as they could - they went in knowing they themselves could die - it was a write your name on your helmet just incase situation.

This is the sign I saw on my way home from London yesterday and my facebook post on return.

My heart hurts from the news - I had to walk part of my journey yesterday and that is a small price - I would have walked the whole thing to undo this tragedy- Alaric Blagrave Snell-Pym contacted me to warn me - I panicked when he initially said a Tower Block in London but it wasn't the area that sprang to my mind - that doesn't alter the horror just the likelihood of me knowing the people living there and highlights a huge issue - there are many tower blocks and flat complexes and even the "luxury" ones give me the chills when I hear from people living in them that they've turned out to be structurally unsound and are being re-built around them and so on. Many are old and do not follow the modern regs. The fire fighters fought and rescued and did amazing things - and I know their work is still on going to find what exactly happened - they sustained injuries, they are heros. I cried when Al told me and then later on when I saw the news before I went to the memorial reception I was heading too. I saw this sign on the way back home today from East London, at least I couldn't smell it on the way home - I did on the way in yesterday and that sickens me :'( It's a nightmare, a pure nightmare.

.......

My mum was struggling with the news - this is an old nightmare of hers due to the flats that were opposite her as a child and the fear of collapse from fires etc... Mum and Dad were both surprised that there was gas on in the flats due to a blow out when they were younger, that had collapsed a block of flats - there is sadness and anger.

When I got into London on Wednesday there were harrowed faces and people dashing for the newspapers as soon as they hit the stands - those who were talking had the event on their lips. London is a sprawling hive of people, mainly in the last century it has sprawled upwards.

There are regulations - each flat is supposed to be a sealed fire safe unit, they are designed and often retrofitted to contain fire - that is not what happened here. Grenfell went up like a candle with the fire spreading around the building, violently, unpredictably and rapid. People jumped and threw kids out of windows from the 15th storey and so on.

Many things appear to have gone wrong. I can not get it out of my brain and it hurts. I was visiting South Ken the Fire was North Ken. a) there was no sprinkler system and they had just redone the plumbing - apparently not adding it was not about money b) the alarms were all in the corridors outside the flats and were not loud enough to wake people c) the advice was to stay still which if it had been a normal fire would have worked sadly it didn't and that has cost lives and will continue to do so as now no one is ever going to stay still whilst the fires burn themselves out d) the cladding...

Now obviously lots of investigations have to be done but from the information that's come out so far this is what I think happened - the plastic was not fire retardant, it caught fire and was wrapped around the building - worse it had huge air gaps behind it causing a flu effect that sucked the air through making the fire burn more viciously and helped it spread upwards. The company that make/instal? the cladding are saying they followed regs in which case those regs need to be looked at. But more than that - where were the engineers? Did no one stop and thing what could the down sides of this be? What might happen if a) b) c) were to happen? One report was suggesting the cladding had been involved in other fires in India if that is the case then they must have known it was a potentially fatal issue?

The cladding also fell down meaning that police and fire fighters had to clear the local area and evacuate near by buildings. The gutted block is however still structurally sound enough for the fire fighters to be wondering around looking for bodies.

The emergency services were all maxed out and then some and they still saved lives, they still risked their own.

Nearly 9 million pounds was spent on tarting that building up - mainly spent on the cladding - to make it look nice so the expensive flats didn't have to look at the ugly mostly social housing. Yeah... so if the cladding was the problem those families, that community have been decimated because they didn't fit with gentrified London. They were the working class that had to be covered up and hidden - the asthetics of the building to the outside gaze was more important than the internal functionality and safety of its residents.

I am so ********* angry right now.

There are kids/whole families missing, out of those confirmed dead there are refugees who had already fled horror only to die like this, the young, the old... people - The People - just a standard mix of Londoners - wiped out.

And I mentioned the community, those who got out watched their homes and neighbours go up in flames - that is not going to be easily if ever forgotten - pretty sure the emergency services people will struggle too. Ontop of that what happens now? There are displaced families - some had bought their flats so now we wait to see if the insurance companies are going to be evil or not and the others? There aren't any new council houses being built - social housing has been being whittled away so where are they going to go?

London/Britain is having a bit of a time at the moment - and that is when heros emerge as the Underground sign says and not just the emergency services - various religous and social communities have stepped forward to help shelter and provide - even back here in Gloucestershire people are trying to work out how to help.

As I left South Ken and made my way through central and East London to my parents home I passed many many blocks of flats and the fear curdled my stomach - and the next morning too on my way back to Paddington Station - seeing them in day light with washing and bikes and sundries showing just how full of life those blocks are. All I can hope is that things will be done to make sure this is the only time this was allowed to happen. But that's what my parents thought about the gas blow out...

Yes I think this was preventable and that the chase for pretty penny has cost families their lives and their homes and worse of all I think those who should answer for it wont.

All I can do is offer love to those who are affected but that wont bring the dead back to life :,(