Friends

Holidays offer time for reflection. Expecially when during that time one has a 'big' birthday with continuing celebrations [thanks everyone!]

We are on holiday with lots of friends and family - and I have just realised that amongst them are at least eighteen of my facebook friends. Family should of course also be friends and it is an added blessing when they are!

'Friend' has of course taken on a different meaning since the advent of social networking when one nominates 'friends' on sites like facebook. But never the less all these friends are - or should be - just as important in our lives.

Tennyson wrote a very long poem - 'In Memoriam' on the death of his friend, Arthur Hallam. I won't try you all with that although it is of course a masterpiece. Instead the following is written with thought to all my friends whether we meet up once a year, virtually on the internet or every day in real life. Every friend is important to me!

Saint Augustine had as always a couple of wise pieces of advice about friends:

I want my friend to miss me as long as I miss him.
and
If two friends ask you to judge a dispute, don't accept, because you will lose one friend; on the other hand, if two strangers come with the same request, accept because you will gain one friend.

And a warning from the great William Blake about the difference between friendship and enimity:

A Poison Tree
I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I water'd it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears;
And I summoned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright;
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole
When the night had veil'd the pole:
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretch'd beneath the tree.

So dedicated to all my friends and family from a cold and wet West Country which is made warm by the friends and family who are here with us and the love of those who are in other parts of the world!:

Emily Dickinson - Are Friends Delight or Pain?
Are Friends Delight or Pain?
Could Bounty but remain
Riches were good --

But if they only stay
Ampler to fly away
Riches are sad.

For the record - my reading of this is that Friends who stay are better than all the 'Bounty and Riches'. My friends certainly are.


[Elizannie is on holiday and trying to ignore politics and contentious thoughts. However this blog is worth reading:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/stephanieflanders/ ]

This is the end of the innocence*

Well that's how yesterday's budget felt to me. We could all hope that it would not be too bad, that the LibDems would fulfil their promises to 'rein in' the Conservatives worst choices and make the budget one that although eye wateringly hard would affect all sections of society - nay take from the rich more than from the poor. Those supporting the Robin Hood Tax were hoping for just that - money to be taken from the greedy banks [we have all learnt about them over the past few years!] to help the World's poor. The Merry Men and Women of Nottingham were disappointed yet again: http://robinhoodtax.org.uk/. Instead this was the reverse of a fair budget as it looks as if it will overwhelmingly take from the poor and give back to the already rich.

It would not be so bad if we still had as many council houses [whoops now equals 'social housing']as we did in the 1980s and then the cap on housing benefit might be achievable. Callers to 'Money Box Live' on BBC radio4 told Paul Lewis that they did not know how they were going to manage to pay their rent next year. I wonder if George Osborne was listening in to that?

George Osborne also talked about children growing up in homes where 'worklessness' was the norm. What's wrong with the old-fashioned word 'Unemployment'? Why does George's use of 'worklessness' somehow smack of 'worthlessness' or 'shiftlessness'. Did he see the woman on BBC TV news who remarked that it is all very well to talk about getting people back to work but where are the jobs coming from? Obviously not the public sector.

And lone parents must get a job [with the proviso of there being a job to get] when their youngest child is 5. Fair enough but where is the child care to facilitate this? Will it be economical for the state to provide 'free' child care so that these lone parents can find a well paying job near enough to home to race back to fetch said children before the child care 'closes' for the night?

George please read The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. I won't ask again but would ask amazon to deliver you one if I didn't know you can afford your own copy.

Sorry to be a misery today but like Kevin Maguire of the Daily Mirror, I don't like the budget! http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/columnists/maguire/2010/06/23/history-will-show-george-osborne-s-emergency-budget-was-a-disaster-115875-22352641/

*Lyrics from the Don Henley song The End Of The Innocence . But of course that little phrase also reminds of Blake's Songs of Innocence and thenSongs of Experience. And I think an appropriate Blake 'Song of Innocence' would be:
Infant Joy
I have no name;
I am but two days old."
What shall I call thee?
"I happy am,
Joy is my name."
Sweet joy befall thee!

Pretty joy!
Sweet joy, but two days old.
Sweet Joy I call thee:
Thou dost smile,
I sing the while;
Sweet joy befall thee!

Which lightens my mood but:

A 'Song of Experience' dedicated to George Osborne:

“London”
I wander thro’ each charter’d street,
Near where the charter’d Thames does flow.
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every Man,
In every Infants cry of fear,
In every voice: in every ban,
The mind-forg’d manacles I hear

How the Chimney-sweepers cry
Every black’ning Church appalls,
And the hapless Soldiers sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls

But most thro’ midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlots curse
Blasts the new-born Infants tear
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse

Please don't let us return to these times.