I was thinking about our government here in England, recent changes and others in the pipeline, the attitude to refugees and people from overseas who want to visit or settle here, and the impact of Brexit on our farmers.
This song came to mind.
My Uncle Bill and Auntie Jean farmed on the fertile land of the York plain — my cousin still runs the farm.
When I was a child, among other things they grew potatoes and strawberries. At this time of year, when the strawberries were ripe, the gypsies would come for casual work as pickers.
At home we had a children's book called The Little One's Own, a Christmas annual of a children's magazine, that had come to us from either my grandmother or great-grandmother (they both lived in the same village). It was an old book, Victorian, and full of moral stories and dire warnings to children. One that gripped my imagination was about little Nell who was stolen by the gypsies on her way home through the wood. I found it very alarming, and didn't know enough about gypsies to realise they were strongly family people and had quite enough children of their own — they didn't want anyone else's.
So when I went with my mother and Uncle Bill to pick some strawberries, and we had to walk past the caravans drawn up at the edge of the fields, with gypsies sitting in their doorways watching us go by, I was frightened of them because I didn't know any better.
This spring in the UK, new laws have been passed by the government increasing the powers of police to harass travellers — to arrest them and impound their vehicles.
Another new law currently proposed in the nationality and borders bill threatens those who rescue asylum seekers at sea with life imprisonment.
Meanwhile the combination of coronavirus travel restrictions and Brexit (from the end of June people from overseas without pre-settled status could no longer work here) have left our fruit farms short of pickers — short by hundreds of thousands, not by just a few.
It's a depressing scenario.
It brought back to mind those days long gone when the gypsies came to Uncle Bill's farm for the strawberry picking.
I hope the tide turns. I hope people learn to live together in peace, and work for the common good and the wellbeing of creation. Despite overwhelming signs to the contrary, I do believe that change will come; and I hope it will be in time, while the Earth can still be healed.
God bless the gypsy, the refugee, the people who help others when they are in trouble, the vagrants and the migrant workers, the people who barely survive. God bless them and give them their time in the sun.
Today, leaving our house are a little saw and . . . er . . . I think it's some kind of wrench. I have no idea. I've had it for decades but never used it once.
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