The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2480 by Angharad Copyright© 2014 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

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The news was much the same every day, politics, ebola, Syria or terrorism. It seems some kids from Pompey who snuck out to Syria have been killed. They apparently wanted to come home having discovered that the reality of war, especially as being fought by the so called Isis people, is particularly brutal. It’s sad that probably otherwise ordinary youngsters can be so fired up by bigots and fanatics to go and risk their lives without thinking about the consequences—to themselves or their loved ones.

Whilst looking for something else, I came across photos of Syrian army soldiers who’d been decapitated and their bodies left tied to railings or just lying in the street where no attempt had been left to clean them up. They’re left to be exhibits of what happens to the enemies of Isis. It’s all a bit barbaric and the sort of thing that happened in Europe during the days of the Roman empire or the Nazis in pre-war Germany. However, cruelty and fear are not good ways to rule anywhere and usually end up with the dictators being toppled, arrested and usually shot as the people who suffered under them lose patience, revolt and turn executioner.

Today, there were stories about a nurse in the States returned after saving lives in West Africa and was being told to stay in voluntary quarantine for three weeks to prove she was clear of the disease. I felt like calling her countrymen cowards and hypocrites, then heard later of how a woman from York working with MSF in Monrovia had to keep away from her grandchildren because stupid parents at the school used by her grandchildren would have caused ructions.

They’re all frightened about ebola, a disease which is difficult to catch unless you have contact with body fluids from a victim who is showing symptoms. It ignores the fact that these two women, who have courage above and beyond those who decry them, are health professionals and know the symptoms—they’ve been caring for sufferers for weeks—would be the first to place themselves in quarantine or call for help if they felt any symptoms. Instead, they’re ostracised by cowards who have done nothing braver than cross a busy road. Had I been closer to either of them geographically, I’d have gone and hugged them—they’re risking their lives to save others and to stop the spread of a disease and are victimised by very stupid cowards: the situation being hyped by a media which could do more to help them but prefers to use poor journalism to make things worse. I am so regularly disgusted by my fellow man that I sometimes think I came to the wrong planet this time around.

I wondered if I would have the courage to do what these heroines are doing, and I don’t know if I would. To risk my life to save those of strangers, then I hear the diary from doctor on the Today programme, and hope that I would. I’m in the wrong occupation to help, they need nurses and doctors not dormouse watchers, so all I can do is send money to the charities involved and hope they use it wisely.

We’ve become so self absorbed as a society, so busy chasing money and materialism we’ve lost sight of the truly important things in life. We’re getting softer in our capacity to cope with hardship, requiring counselling if our library book isn’t in when we go, but being much harder to those in difficulties of various sorts as if everything is their own fault except when we get into similar difficulties—then it’s someone else’s fault.

We need to wake up and smell the coffee. Compared to people in West Africa or Syria or Iraq, Congo, Sudan and several other places, we don’t know we’re born. What must it be like to be a child in these places full of deadly germs or worse, lunatics with rocket propelled grenades; or to be a parent watching your children die because of poverty or because some arsehole with a gun decided they had a god given right to kill them. What god do they worship? A monster of some sort who enjoys the blood of innocents being shed in his name. Something is wrong somewhere, very wrong if what they believe is correct. No wonder I’m agnostic, these monsters are following in the footsteps of the earlier Abrahamic religions of Judaism and Christianity to form a trio of mass murder.

“Mummy,” I felt a pulling at my sleeve.

“Yes, darling?”

“Auntie Stella asked if you were coming down for breakfast or not this morning?”

“Er what?” I glanced at the clock, I’d been in my brown study for nearly half an hour. “I’ll be down in fifteen minutes, tell her. I’m just going to grab a shower.”

“Mummy, have you been crying?” asked Livvie.

I felt a wetness round my eyes. “There was a very sad story on the news.”

“Oh, okay.”

“Afternoon,” offered my sister in law as I entered the kitchen. Her two were sitting at the table with most of mine, squabbling over who got what cereal in what bowl. I used to have matching sets of china bowls, in fact bone china. Now we have assorted plastic bowls of different designs from flowers to cartoon characters because they bounce better when knocked of tables or thrown off high chairs.

“’S my turn for Bugs Bunny.”

“I wan’ Hello Kitty not Pepper Pig.”

For a moment my mind wanted to strangle them all. People were dying of starvation and this lot wasted almost as much food as they ate. Then I recollected what had been said on the radio about the woman in Africa bringing her seven year old child to the treatment centre only to have him die shortly afterwards from ebola, never to hold him again or to see him again; not even able to bury him in the traditional way because his body was soon in a body bag awaiting incineration. For one moment I wondered how I’d feel if it had happened to any of mine and it was all I could do not to cry. How do these poor people cope? I really don’t know. They have nothing to speak of in material wealth and then some dreadful disease takes away their children—we really don’t know we are born.