Slumgullion

Due to my disease, I may not have much of a road ahead, so I’ve been wondering what I’d like to leave behind – I mean pass on. It might surprise that this vein of thought is a deep delight.

I’ve been pondering, for example, which little flashes of culture from the last thirty or so years of adult life might land with others, as they’ve landed with me, as gifts worth carrying. 

The following clutches of ‘shorts’, after a little shifting and jostling, are those that have settled. They’re listed in the order I met them. Do dive in, the water’s lovely.

A sticker slapped onto a sign in the park: ‘Anti-vaxxer: See also, critical thinker’ But someone’s scrubbed that out, now it says, ‘…see also, idiot’.

Several friends have told me, mostly in whispers, that they’re not taking the vaccine – in whispers because they’re the social pariahs of the moment.

When I’ve read some of the nasty stuff written about vaccine sceptics, I’ve made an apparently  unlikely leap to conscientious objectors to warfare. Not because COs are just like vaccine sceptics – they’re not – but because of the way they tend to be treated.

Reading time: 13 min.

The Green Man, by Gail E Haley, is the first book that changed my life. I found it in my brother’s room. I was nine. The cover drew me in: a man clad in leaves striding through the wild with acorns around his neck, a rabbit at his feet, and a squirrel on his shoulder clutching his beard. That was enough. I decided to borrow it forever.