Across the pond

Two sparrows are chasing each other across the roof of the house opposite, watched by a pigeon sittting on a telegraph pole in the grey light of a cloudy dawn. A sea gull circles around, swooping down gently flapping its pure white wings. Just now two small black shapes have entered the picture. Swallows, or maybe young gulls. The silence is complete. The grand-children have not yet to greet the new day.

I am left with my thoughts.

Three hundred miles north in Cumbria, twelve families will be waking up, still stunnned by deaths  caused by the taxi-driver who went on the rampage with a rifle and a shot-gun, and killed twelve human beings, starting with his twin brother and his solicitor and a few of his mates from the taxi stand. Going on to who-ever came into his sites as he careered around the leafy lanes of the Lake District. Ending when he walked into the  dense woods near Boot, and shot himself.

Over thousand miles away on the Gaza strip, the Palestinians and their friends have just buried nine dead. What began as a peaceful attempt to break the Israeli blockade of Gaze, with a flotilla of boats sailing from Turkey, ended in a bloody war. The fully armed Israeli commandos shimied down ropes onto the deck of the biggest ship. The Isrealis say they were attacked by the Palestians with poles and clubs. The Palestinians say the Isrealis fired first. The Security Council has ordered an inquiry. So it will be  months before the full facts are established. Though, so far as I can glean, the dead had all been shot and they all came from the Palestinian side.

For days now these two events have dominated the media. A succession of pictures on our television screens. Thousands of words in the newspapers, reporting on, and seeking to explain, what has happened during the week of half-term holiday.

All I can do is mourn the passing of 21 human beings, whose lives were ended so abruptly