I catch only snippets of the news, mostly on radio bulletins, be they on Radio 3 in the morning or Classic FM in the afternoon. Yesterday there was a brief comment about it being a legal requirement that councils in Kent and the SE house unaccompanied migrant children. We grow numb to such phrases and words – we no longer hear their true implications. Unaccompanied children. Children who are alone, away from family from home in an oh so foreign land. The children of migrants who are unable to speak English. Migrant is another such word. People who migrate, who move, nomadic people in such of another life. Hasn’t there always been such – what made them into semi-criminals? Pariahs, even? Is there not enough to go round? And why are they migrating? Are they not really refugees, seeking shelter, safety from abuse, war and poverty? Why are their children alone? What has happened? Give us the real story, their stories so that we may listen, and empathise and help.
I saw the milkman in his van this morning. It’s a little more sooped up than a float (now that is a sound of my childhood, it was a kind of wheeze, not an engine sound, more an expelling of air, a sigh even – I also remember the clip clop of the horse’s hoofs when the milk was delivered by cart to our Nanny’s flat) an open van of sorts all lit up. A comfort in the darkness. Though it wasn’t the man who looks like Bruce Springsteen that I used to see in Morrison’s on a Saturday with his kids. The lit Christmas trees and lights that are beginning to pop up in windows across town are equally comforting in these fast becoming thick black nights. Thank you.
