TONY ON EDUCATING, AIR, TRANSIT

Including Totally Optional Prompts. Have you had a go yet?

Welcome to my daily Diary post. Britain’s independent schools are getting worried. Demanding that the government scale down its curriculum for the under fives, they say it violates the human rights of parents. Well, it’s good that someone is saying so.

The state schools seem to be comatose.

But the reality is, the State is moving more and more into family life. Parents are no longer to be trusted with the education or morals of their children. Now, I agree that many lack parenting skills nowadays, but why is this?
I’d put it down to the liberal style of education over the last 30 years, with the teacher as friend, and morals something to take or leave – which eventually led to the government we have today; a government that is increasingly destroying family and creating the typical ‘State’ child. If it goes on like this, I’ll give it 50 years before the State hatcheries appear.

The UK must re-think its aviation policy.

So says an influential environmental advisory group. When we think of the recent cock-ups at the new Terminal 5 at Heathrow, we can see why. Everything – aircraft, airports, queues – just have to be ‘big’ today.
To me, this is madness. Big means extra complication, and additional possibilities for things going wrong. This is commonsense. So why do governments throughout the west insist on big, today, instead of lots more ‘smaller’?
Well, I think it’s all to do with Big Biz and ideology. ‘Big’ means only big corporations can afford to run them, thus keeping any growing competition out of the arena. Seems to me another example of environmental, and social, chaos just to keep the big guys secure.
Don’t forget to fly by tomorrow.

© Anthony North, May 2008

NOTHING OUTSIDE

I miss my shadow, it’s never there,
nothing hidden, all is bare;
where is my reflection? I see it not,
as if skin and bone is all I’ve got;
What is me if these things are gone,
I hope they’re back before too long;
I seem to be nothing more than me,
discarded, maybe, ‘cos of vanity;
where is anything exterior to my self,
without them I have nothing, no wealth;
I’m just an empty shell of an original kind,
a metaphor concerning what’s in my mind,
empty,
alone,
and blind

(c) Anthony North, May 2008

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I’M NOT ALL THERE – Fiction

I couldn’t quite grasp what was missing. I was stood in the middle of the hall, a hive of activity all around me. Public announcements lanced into my mind – directions left, directions right, directions up, directions down. And off people went – as directed.
The attendants weren’t much help. ‘There’s something missing,’ I said.
‘Yeah, right,’ was the only answer I could get.
I wasn’t even sure how I’d got here. I knew I was here, in this strange, transitional place, but my memory just didn’t want to work.
So I just stood there, in the middle of the hall, confused. And a queue of people began behind me.
The attendants came over, then. After all, I was causing an obstruction.
‘Move along,’ they said. ‘Go where you know you’re supposed to be going.’
‘But I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I haven’t a clue.’
I think they realised something was missing then. After a little head scratching, they directed me in the right direction, I suppose. And it was clear I was not yet ready – hence, the confusion, lack of memory and the knowing that something was missing.
And as my spirit entered the gateway marked ‘purgatory’, I knew the thing that was missing was my body.
Death, it seems, has a habit of doing that.

© Anthony North, May 2008