Pebbles on the Beech

 

by Kevin Wood

jasmine tea

 

I’d heard the news. And it was pretty bad. But I’d decided to go down the Cliff Road to see for myself. It took less than ten minutes before I arrived in the area and looking across the bay towards Dante’s Cliff.  I could see it was all true.

  Overnight the cliff edge had broken away and taken with it about twenty to thirty yards of land. This devastation had meant that my childhood home had gone and was now nothing more than debris strewn across the beach at the foot of the Cliff. It was shocking and brought a lump to my throat. It felt like all my childhood memories had been swept away in one horrendous rockfall.

  As I looked on my mind drifted back to those memories playing in our beautiful cliff top garden. In those days the edge seemed so far away. And beyond it we could look across the bay and out to sea. It was idyllic.

  The garden, of course, is now gone. Much of it over recent years and then the remainder vanished shortly after we finally moved away last year. The Council had constantly warned us about the eroding rock getting closer to our home and sure enough once we had moved more of it fell taking the rest of the garden with it.

  Now this.

  I watched on as all of that emotion and memories were coming flooding back to me. I was holding back the tears.

  I closed my eyes.

  When my eyes were opened, I saw a rainforest burning, laying waste to the trees, sending the wildlife scattering for safety. Fleeing for their lives where possible and for the others…? They would not be so fortunate. For them their homes were no more than ashes. I saw a young orangutan as its forest home was being destroyed and its habitat turned to dust. Then I saw a polar bear hunting on a melting icecap. Searching for food that could no longer be relied on in this changing environment. I saw an oil spill in the sea killing the fish, the seabirds and much of the beautiful creatures that found themselves caught in its wake. Floundering. Helpless.

  And then, when I opened my eyes once more, I could feel their pain. The collective loss. Despair. I thought is this really be what we have done to the world?

  It appears that just as we have spent countless years attacking nature now nature was attacking us. Whether it is my old clifftop home or perhaps the lands that are being flooded by the melting icecaps that had cost the polar bear so dearly.

  For humankind or for nature itself I felt the outcome seemed so bleak. Whether I mourn for the wildlife or the loss of my own home the result is the same for all of us. We are homeless.

  I looked out across the bay and considered what we were leaving behind. Ashes are scattered across a broken forest. Dust is blowing in the breeze of a world in flames as we ignore the other animal and plant life with which we share this planet.

  As the climate screams and temperatures soar.

  Until now as below me I see my home reduced to mere pebbles on the beach.

 About the author  

Kevin Wood is a retired Accountant from Basildon Essex. He has written an, as yet unpublished, octology of short stories titled The Search for Ellie Babble. He continues to write mainly short stories and poems.

Blackbird

by Sheila Kinsella

jasmine tea

I set my rucksack down and notice the strata of the sandstone doorstep, like tiny terraces of dirt and stone, worn away by years of footsteps passing over its threshold. I ring the doorbell.

‘So. It’s you, Eleanor.’ Mum looks me over, blocking the doorway.

‘My name is Leon now,’ I stare at her unblinking, ice-blue eyes.

‘I’ll call you by the name I gave you,’ she moves to close the door.

I hear a familiar voice shout from inside.

‘Ah Mum, let her in. Oops, sorry, him.’  Larry appears behind Mum and swings the door fair off its hinges. ‘Hi!’ He hugs me, pulls me inside and lifts the rucksack into the hallway.

His smell is evocative of my childhood, that faint sweaty odour.

‘Do you want a cuppa? Or is it a beer these days?’ Larry smiles and slaps my arm.

‘Larry, I’ll do it for you,’ Mum pushes past me, her face sour as last week’s milk.

Larry steps aside and leads me into the garden. The crazy paving Dad laid forty years ago zig zags across the yard, broken and loose in places.  Tall blue Delphiniums dwarf the purple Campanula trailing over the ground. Pale pink roses are dotted all around the pergola like a pointillism painting.

‘Don’t mind Mum, she’ll come around.’ Larry sits down on a bench, faded grey by the rain and time.

‘Yeah, Larry. But when?’ I sit down opposite him. ‘It’s been six years.’

‘Anyway, how are you doing up there in Aberdeen?’ Larry smiles.

Fine,’ I reply. ‘I got a job as an environmental engineer. It’s going well. And you?’

‘Well, it’s not been easy.’  Larry picks at a hangnail on this thumb as he talks.

‘I imagine. I heard the garage closed.’

‘You always were the brainy one.’ Larry smirks.  ‘Must have been all that cod liver oil.’ We both laugh at the memory of him passing the golden pearls to his little sister when Mum’s back was turned.

The silence between us is broken by a blackbird singing; its shrill intonation intersperses our conversation. How ironic, the bird’s symbolic meaning is of spirituality and knowledge.

A line of crows caw as they swing to and fro on the telephone wire looped across the street, waiting to pounce on roadkill. The tall trees at the end of the garden rustle as they blow in the breeze. 

We speak at the same time.

‘No, you go,’ our words cross mid-air once more.

‘Don’t you dare say ladies first!’ I mock frown.

‘Seriously, you go.’

‘Were you there at the end?’ I bite my thumbnail; a piece splits off, satisfied, I pinch it with my forefinger and thumb and flick it away.

Larry looks up just as Mum arrives with the tray. As she sets it down on the table, the teapot spills tea over into the tray, mapping out small islands of brown liquid before merging into one.

‘Mum, it’s ok,’ I place my hand on hers. She shakes it off.

Flustered, she tuts and rushes her wiry little body back indoors to get a cloth. Larry and I exchange glances as if to agree to wait until the fuss is finished. She returns with a plate of biscuits, mops up the mess and exits stage right.

‘He wasn’t always lucid. The morphine saw to that.’

‘Did he…’

‘Did he mention you?’ Larry pre-empts my question. ‘Yes.’

‘What did he say.’ I breathe deeply.

‘He told me to make sure you weren’t isolated from the family,’ Larry puts his hand on mine for a second.

‘Did he die here?’ I realise I’m perched on the edge of my seat.

‘She didn’t want him to die in the house.’ Larry sighs. ‘He died in the hospice.’

‘Alone?’ I ask.

‘No, I stayed with him.’ Larry sniffs. ‘The nurses said he hadn’t long.’

‘Mum?’ I ask.

‘She left.’

I look down at my feet and sigh.

‘Will you stay?’ Larry asks.

‘I booked the hotel,’ I reply. ‘But we can still catch up.’

‘He’d have wanted you to stay here.’ Larry emphasises the word here.

‘How can you stay here?’  I ask, raising my hands, palms upwards.

‘It won’t be forever.’ Larry sighs, ‘I’ll find a job soon.’ He twiddles the hairs of his beard as he talks.

‘Always the favourite,’ I smirk.

‘Not that old line again.’ Larry sniggers.

‘I’m of.,’ I make to stand up but Larry gestures for me to stay.

‘Look, I’ve something to tell you,’ he purses his lips together, ‘only not here.’

‘What?’ I ask.

Larry puts his finger to his lips, ‘We’ll talk tomorrow. The funeral is at St Mary’s, you need to be at the church for one-thirty tomorrow.’

Mum stands at the back door, arms folded over her pinny, eyes narrowed and lips straight across like a dash.

‘Mum, I’ll see you tomorrow,’ I touch her arm. She sniffs and looks the other way.

Next day, I stand in the funeral parlour looking down upon my Dad. His skin is cold and putty-like. His black suit emphasises the death-pallor. I tell him I love him and say goodbye.

Later, at the church, I wait with Larry and Mum as the mourners arrive. The shake hands with us and saying, ‘Sorry for your loss.’ Neighbours and distant cousins I no longer recognise traipse past to fill the pews. When there’s nobody left to arrive, I steer Mum into our pew. For a few seconds, I feel her hand touch mine like it used to.

The funeral ceremony seems interminable. The coffin is carried in by the pallbearers and laid to rest at the altar. The congregation strains to reach the high notes of ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful.’ The organ plays a key too high for us.  After the hymn, Larry reads the eulogy. My Dad was a good man, kindness itself, it’s true. I can’t fault it. Mum moves up next to me to fill the space Larry left.

Black funeral cars take us to the hotel in Canterbury for a sit-down meal. I remember coming here for family weddings, including Larry’s. The marriage didn’t last; he was back at our parents’ house within twelve months. The food is bland, salmon with mashed potato and a sprinkling of frozen peas. Mum is omnipresent. I can’t get to talk to Larry alone.

My chest binder is pinching under my arms, I have to release it. Now there’s a dilemma, no gender-neutral toilets here. Not wanting to draw attention to myself, I go into the Ladies. I sit on the loo and unbutton my shirt to readjust the binder. I hear the clicking of heels and the door slamming. One woman goes into the cubicle next to me, pees but continues to chatter to the other outside.

‘Did you see the state of her?’ Her voice is high pitched, and she slurs her words together.

‘Short hair, business suit, white shirt and brogues! B-u-u-utchy baby!’ The woman outside shrieks.

I can’t resist. I flush the toilet and open the door.

‘Lesbe friends!’ The woman in the cubicle cackles.

‘Er… Mira, shut up.’ Her friend says as she stares at me, her mascara brush trails down her left cheek, her mouth making the shape of the ‘o’ in a doughnut.

I check my breast binder in the mirror, pulling it down at the sides and pushing my breasts back inside. I savour the moment when reflected in front of me, Mira emerges red-faced from her cubicle looking sheepish.

‘Ladies,’ I nod at them and leave, chuckling to myself.

‘What’s put that smirk on your face?’ Larry asks with a bemused look.

I recount the scene back to him. Soon his belly is aching with laughter.

‘Stop, stop,’ he snorts.

‘Oh, not the piggy snort laugh!’ He sets me off, and the pair of us are crying.

‘Have you no respect!’ Mum’s voice intervenes.

But that just makes it worse. We can’t stop. She stomps off in the direction of the Ladies. I seize my chance.

‘What’s the secret?’

‘Dad left everything to us.’ Larry says.   

       

‘Are you serious?’

‘Well, he told me a while back that he put everything in a Trust,’ Larry says. ‘It means Mum can live in the house, but the capital is kept for us, his children.’

‘Does Mum know?’ I sigh.

‘I don’t think so,’ Larry raises his glass. ‘You know what she’s like. Hides everything under the carpet.’

‘Yeah, stiff upper lip and all that,’ I agree.

‘Look, it’s not an issue. I just wanted to tell you, that’s all.’

‘Thanks. I just hate this resentment she feels towards me.’ My eyes start to fill up. ‘I miss her.’

‘I know,’ Larry says.

Suddenly, I hear raised voices coming from the other side of the room. A door slams and crockery crashes to the floor. A waiter rushes over to the table.

‘Excuse me, I think you’d better see to your Mum.’ He’s breathing heavily, carrying a tray of dishes filled with apple pie and ice cream in one hand and pieces of broken china in the other. 

‘In the Ladies,’ he pants.

I rise and hurry over with Larry in pursuit. The two women gossips I encountered earlier are shuffling back to their seats. Mira’s cheek is red and flushed. I overhear her saying that she just went for her.

My mum sits on the frilly pink chair in the women’s toilets. As she looks up at me, tears meander through the wrinkles on her face.

‘Mum, are you okay?’

She reaches her arms out to me. ‘I couldn’t let them say those things about you.’

‘It’s alright Mum. I don’t care.’ I hug her. ‘It’s not important what they think.’ Our eyes meet. ‘It’s what you think that matters.’

‘I’m sorry.’ She pulls a hanky from her sleeve. ‘It’s hard.’

‘Just try,’ I squeeze her arms, ‘just try.’

‘I will.’ She sniffs. ‘How can I go out there now? After this?’

‘We’ll go out together with our heads held high.’

———————————

About the author

Sheila Kinsella’s short stories draw inspiration from her Irish upbringing. Blessed with abundant natural curiosity, Sheila lures the reader into a shrewdly observed world via imagery and comedy. 

Sheila graduated with an MA in Creative Writing (Distance Learning) from Lancaster University in the United Kingdom in 2017.

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/19660897.Sheila_Kinsella

Kidnap

by Anne-Marie Swift

a cup of jasmine tea

The plane is full, the way planes always seem to be full nowadays, people crowding and jostling to get on, scrabbling to squash bags into overhead lockers. 
 

Danny sits in seat 10C – his regular business travel seat. Today, however, he is wearing orange shorts, blue flip flops and a fake Armani t-shirt. Seats A and B are empty in spite of the full plane. 

Danny is heading home.

On the way out, his plan had seemed so very clear, so very straightforward. He was fuelled by anger and a sense of being absolutely in the right. He knew, without a doubt, that what he was doing was the right thing, it was what anyone in his situation would do. 

On the way out, he travelled in his business suit. Wearing the linen suit, he was strong and in control, and if the leather shoes with the long, pointed toes did hurt a little, they also said “money” in clear loud tones and money, Danny knows, means power. 

The plane took off and Danny looked at the crossword in his newspaper instead and though the black and white squares seemed to be moving and blurring into each other, he did start to feel calmer and relaxed, just as he had felt when he first sat down.  

For the rest of the twelve hours Danny tried, and failed to watch a movie on the four-inch screen in front of him. He took his laptop out of his briefcase and tried, and failed, to concentrate on a complex quote he was putting together for a customer. He’d taken leave from his job, but it if you wanted to get on, Danny knew, you’d better be there, be available the whole time. 

Keep working, keep pushing forwards, keep phoning the customers, keep the deals coming, keep the money coming in. This was Danny’s philosophy and though Sunisa had left him, taking the children with her, so his home and his soul were both empty, it was what he clung to. 

An airline meal arrived: yellow sauce concealing a piece of chicken; chewy formerly-frozen bread roll, a dizzyingly sweet pudding. Danny took a mouthful of everything, just enough to keep his energy levels up. He noted that the guy next to him had eaten everything on the tray and washed it down with a Coke. Danny tried, and was surprised to succeed, in obtaining an additional helping of wine, which enabled him to sleep soundly for a couple of hours. 

He was woken by the gentle sobbing of the guy next to him, who was looking at a photo album and crying softly. He could see the photo of a Thai girl – or was a boy really? – and he could guess the whole sad story and he just didn’t want to know. He had his own stuff.  So, he closed his eyes again and the guy stopped crying and drifted off to sleep, his head lolling amiably onto Danny’s shoulder and Danny had to fight the urge to give the guy a strong hard push, enough to hurt. And of course, there would be a greasy mark on Danny’s expensive-looking light linen jacket and his neck was still hurting where the laptop had crashed onto his head. 

But then they had landed and everyone was rushing for the overhead lockers and the stewardess was pleading, “Please don’t stand until the plane has come to a final standstill” and Danny felt wired and hot and ready for action and he didn’t care anymore about the fat sad loser, who never would find the girl or boy he was looking for, he was just ready to go and do what he needed to do. 

Now, on the way back, the doors closing, stewardesses performing the emergency ritual, screens dropping down, air already stale, Danny still can’t work out what went wrong. 

In Bangkok he got off the plane, pushing his way out through the Business Class, one of the first through passport control, his papers in order of course, they always were, then racing to the taxi rank. He was travelling hand luggage only, as always. Danny laughed at the guys he worked with who needed to check luggage in. What a waste of time. Though it was true, he spent hours at the weekends decanting toiletries from big bottles to smaller. He hadn’t known how long it took until Sunisa went and he had to do it all himself. There were a lot of things he hadn’t known until she left him. 

“Blimey” he said to one of the blokes he worked with “I had no idea how bloody complicated the house is. Can’t work the washing machine to save my life and I had to drive round the block with the top down and my shirts on the back seat to get them dry in time for work”. 

They laughed at him and his boss said, “You’d better get online, get a new wife” and they laughed again. Nobody asked where she’d gone, what had happened to the kids. Sunisa was gone and that was that. 

She hadn’t left a note, but then again, she didn’t need to. She’d talked enough about taking the kids to Thailand, letting them meet their Thai family, letting them learn to speak some Thai, and what Danny had done each time she mentioned it was basically to agree. Yes, he said, yes it would be a great idea and they could all go for a year or so, and he could probably work out of the office in Bangkok, what difference did it make where you were working from nowadays? Yes, he always said, yes, but don’t go on about it, I’ve had a hell of a week and there’s this big deal coming up and after we’ve done the deal I’ll have some time to think about it. 

Once she’d gone, he realised he didn’t have a clear idea of where, but it hadn’t been too difficult to find out, just a few quid bunged to a secretary in the Bangkok office. It wasn’t rocket science He knew now where the kids were, what times they went to school, what classes they were in. He probably knew more than he had when the kids lived at home.

The taxi stopped outside the school. There was Thai pop music on the taxi radio.  They waited. The driver turned the engine off so there was no more air conditioning. Danny and the driver both smoked. Danny sat and sweated into his business summer clothes. He didn’t want to look like some dickhead tourist in shorts and flip-flops. He wanted the kids to see him as he saw himself: strong and powerful, the kind of guy who made things happen. He’d had to take the jacket off when the fat bastard had sweated all over it but he was still in shirt and trousers and even if his feet felt as though they were being boiled alive, he knew the shoes spoke loud and clear.

At 4:30 the school day ended. Children pouring out of school doors, a sense of slight chaos, but everyone knowing where they were going. Not so different from the end of the school day at home though Danny had rarely been around to pick them up and even when he was supposed to, he’d often ended up sending one of the secretaries or occasionally even a colleague. He watched the stream of kids. Would he even recognise his own two?

He did, of course he did. Suddenly there they were, coming together in the playground.  His stomach lurched, as if he’d been punched. He hadn’t imagined this, this sudden feeling of what he could only describe as love. 

His kids were slightly taller, slightly paler than the others. They looked happy and relaxed, they were talking to their classmates. How could that be? How had they learnt Thai? How long had they been gone? Danny realised that nine months had gone by since Sunisa had decamped.  

Both boys had grown, both were slimmer. They smiled with their friends; there was a little game of football. His younger son, a little pudgy and slow before, dribbled the ball easily around another, larger boy. There was laughter. 

This was the moment that Danny was supposed to step out of the taxi, grab his children, bundle them into the taxi, and tell the driver to head to the airport. This was the moment his children would thank him for the rest of their lives. This was the moment that he would be re-united with them and live happily ever after with his two children. The kids would be pleased to be home, they must hate it in Thailand, hot and smelly and they don’t speak the language even if their mother does.

And the bitch that was his ex-wife could stay and stew on her own in Thailand. She could see how she liked waking up to a house empty of kids, how she liked looking at unplayed-with toys, how she liked not telling bedtime stories, and not being expected to know everything about everything.  She could be happy with her Thai family. Danny would be with the kids and everything would be fine at last. 

Danny looked at the children, his children, looked at their happiness, their young gentle faces, and saw how it would really play out. He closed the taxi door. 

‘Hotel, mate’ he said. 

Seat 10C, two empty seats between him and the window, he tried to work out what had gone wrong and why he was flying home alone.

2050

by Robert Ferguson

jasmine tea

 

I woke Georgina as usual with the bowl of milky coffee to which she had become addicted on our Paris honeymoon. She seldom spoke until she had finished it, being a long, deep sleeper once she had vigorously  ensured my comfort for the night, and hers. “Aaaah,” she said, or I expect that’s what it was. That is certainly what she usually grunted, as she swung her long dark legs from beneath the duvet and walked, otherwise silently, in her beautiful West African sway, to the bathroom.

Georgina had been a baby of the Mediterranean, one of the last few shipments of illegal immigrants dumped off the Sussex coast by people-traffickers in 2023 at the end of a journey from Ghana across the Sahara, then, after another swim and incarceration in France, across the Channel. Someone, not her mother or father, had put an arm around the drowning baby as he swam the last mile from the massively over-crowded rubber boat which had left France in the dark and fog of the night before. Both of them made it to the English coast, gasping and exhausted, though Georgina’s parents didn’t; and her saviour handed over Georgina to the volunteers gathered there to welcome these poor scraps, and disappeared to make his own way in our world. Every day, I prayed that he had settled safely and comfortably here, and gave thanks for his humanity, which had given me my life’s love. At least he would be secure now from the brutish Immigration Centres and anti-immigrant prejudices which had still been part of the insularity of British life when he and Georgina landed.

Georgina wasn’t her given name, of course. That was something Muslim and unpronounceable without long practice, and she had accepted equably the name she’d been given by the charity which bailed her out of the hands of Social Services, and found her a couple of adoptive parents in South London, where she went to school. Arthur and Anne were lovely, loving people who brought up Georgina as their own, lent her the example of their straightforward honesty, quick London wits, and loads of common sense, and sent her off to a very good University from which she rushed home to them every vacation, and to the holiday job and colleague-friends whom she’d enjoyed ever since she’d walked in as soon as she legally could to ask for work. Now she was a senior editor at a very well-established publisher in Bloomsbury, and set to make Partner in a few more years.

London, indeed most of the UK and the world, is a very different place now from what it was when Georgina arrived. The rate of building new blocks has slowed down, and the rate of repairs and maintenance of existing buildings has increased. Most faces are so much more relaxed and friendly these days, in their rainbow hues. People greet each other again with a word as well as a smile, and feel safe outside their own front door. There are more trams, all with wide, low doors for easier access, and far fewer personal cars; and all of them are electric-powered, so getting around the cities is quicker, cleaner and easier. The experiments with driverless cars didn’t last long. They were either too slow when caught up in convoys, or bumped too often, though many safety features were spun off them onto the new generation of vehicles.

But the great thing is the integration of attitudes. Before the early 2020’s, the British seemed to have forgotten that we are a nation of immigrant refugees, from as far back as history extends. Celts, Saxons, Vikings, Normans, Dutch, Germans, Russians and Poles, Irish, Jews from all over the place, South Asians of a variety of races, Arabs and Mongols when the Middle East exploded at the end of the last century, and Africans from the Caribbean or direct from Africa, as Georgina is. And of course there have been plenty of British emigrants to the ancient British Commonwealth countries, first to Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and then, with their booming economic strength, to India and China, and the city-states of Hong Kong, Singapore and the Gulf. And, given time, all have become integrated into their new home’s society; and that has both caused and been helped by the integration of the individual nation-states that used to make such a fuss about being so special and independent of all the others.

Once that silly Brexit business had been reversed in 2019, people seemed to come to their senses. It had become clear, even to the most entrenched Little Englanders, that, at the best, it would take several years to set up the details of trading agreements across the globe which would be as favourable as conditions within the old European Union. In the meantime, there would be years of rapid decline in the UK economy from which it would take even more years to recover. The outcry for a second referendum had been deafening, and successful, and we had pulled back from the brink into the arms of the Europeans, with a whole lot of back-covering and face-saving which fooled nobody.

The politicians who had so nearly taken us to disaster were thrown out at the next opportunity, and the other lot tried; but, however well-meaning, they made their usual economic mess through not daring to increase their income while not daring not to try to fulfil their promises. And, of course, “cometh the time, cometh the person”, eventually. Gradually, the New Realists were able to persuade more and more people that we couldn’t have a tip-top health service and fair pensions on a basic income tax of 20%. In whole numbers, 10 or 15, let alone 20, into 1 doesn’t go adequately, and never did. Once they got into government, things started very gradually to improve, step by tiny step, which meant that, although times were a little harder for a few years, very few people noticed what was diverted from their pay before they saw it. Everyone enjoyed the improved security of knowing they’d have a decent basic income, be seen and treated by the medical services in hours rather than days or weeks, and would be looked after in their old age.

Beyond the English Channel and North Sea, things improved too in the 2020’s. With Britain back on board the European Union, its economy not much harmed and its military forces strengthening, the Union’s influence increased as a counter-balance to the United States, Russia and China. Then, after Washington had successfully faced down a little nation, and the world narrowly avoided total disaster when they tried the same game on one of the big ones, it became obviously in everyone’s interest to build up the United Nations, root out the time-servers there, and make it do what it was intended to do. Gradually again, the power-struggles of the Middle East were quelled, human rights violations were met head-on with firm international action, and, with spreading globalisation and education and the passage of time, Islam became more and more widely understood as an Abrahamic faith to be respected, like Christianity, with the effect of reducing the Muslim fear of domination under the yokes of other religions.

That showed here quite quickly, especially as the number of practicing Christians continued to decline, and more and more people stopped pretending to uphold what they had no intention of using except at Christmas and their funeral. The churches that did remain contributed by actively inviting local Muslims and Sikhs, Hindus and Buddhists, to come and explain their religions to them, and so build up both understanding and active friendships; and, of course gradually again, integration increased. It became safe for strangers to visit mosques and gurdwaras and temples, and to wander among the wonderful spicy smells of Asian shops and cafes.

Now, the streets are sunny, even in the rain, and the inconsistencies of income have been evened out to a tolerable extent. Women are still admired but no longer abused, and are seldom embarrassed in public places where anyone forgetting their manners is soon reminded, gently but firmly, not to be so selfish or old-fashioned. Rough sleeping still occurs, but the modern psychiatric social services centres have welcomed most of those whom medical science and trained volunteer mentors can help; and the few men and women whose need for total independence and freedom is overwhelming are tolerated and ensured three meals a day from mobile vans, rural and urban, if they’ll take them.

So – who would have believed it? – here we are, according to my Mum and Dad and the majority of their friends of similar age, in a better world than the one in which they grew up and struggled through the difficulties of their youth. But then, as Georgina always points out to me when I get pessimistic, history has a pendulum, so that nothing is totally terrible for ever. Just hang in there, ‘cos it’ll take a turn for the better in its own good time.