But in the end...

So it was Exit. We didn't see that coming at all. Even Farage changed his mind about three times on the night - defining the word "slippery". 

Anyway, time will tell I suppose. I have seen the accusations of racism and it's not really something I have some across. I just think some evil genius somewhere is congratulating him/herself on the way that people felt that the economic misery of their lives was down to the EU and not successive British Governments who have largely ignored the poor and the working class unless they were searching out people to press the demands of the austerity budget upon. 

Everything that has happened since has left me vaguely uncomfortable. I'm not very good with bad feeling. I'm not happy with people using that bad word about Boris Johnson or booing him as he got into his car. I don't really feel that this thing should be done again until we get a different result - no matter what the petitions say. So what to do? The future that people like Boris or Nigel envisage for us is not a future I am interested in. 

So maybe it is time to put our money where our mouth is. If we don't want to see refugees treated badly or even students or foreign workers - then we need to work to make sure that doesn't happen. If we want a kinder, less exclusive society, the what are we prepared to do to achieve it? And if we understand why the poor and the disabled and those who shop at food banks were so angry - how does that stir us into action?

Because in the end, it is all about the love. I watched Samantha Cameron watch her husband, going through agonies because she loves him. I thought it might be the first real positive emotion I had seen all the way through this rubbish.

I am unhappy and a bit scared. We have no idea how this will land and the people who were so keen on it haven't got the faintest idea either. But I'm a Christian in I'm asked to have faith. Not in a dodgy system or ideology but in a God who loves me. That will be my starting point I think.

Voting

So the Polling Day comes to an end and I think we are all glad to see the back of it. I have found the last few days quite wearying what with one thing and another. For what it's worth I came down as a remainer. I have not that enthused by the European set up but I don't like the idea of pulling up the drawbridge when it's all such a mess. Also, I just couldn't find myself voting on the same side as Nigel Farage and some of the people he attracts in the street are even more troubling. Lastly, for purely selfish reasons, I work in a charity, supported by some government money. I'm not convinced that if European money is withdrawn, national government will have little charities at the top of their lists for handouts. So there you are. I don't expect everyone to agree but let's keep it civil please. I did read on a Twitter feed that I usually like that I may well have voted in Armageddon. Well listen to me sweetheart. Stories this week have included

• A disgusting group of people breeding fox cubs to throw to hounds to train them to kill. On top of there being no words to describe how disgusting and savage this is - fox hunting is against the law here!!! What part of that sentence do you people think doesn't apply to you. Foxes are nuisances so shoot em. Don't chase them in some perverse game to make you feel excited. Get over yourself and be a bit normal.
• I have read of a secret meeting that Donald Trump has had with Evangelical Pastors. It was supposed to be a secret but half the people there seem to have had secret recorders on them which they have almost immediately handed over to the Internet. These are TOP Christian names. They have written books and preached and things. Donald Trump is a man who thinks racial profiling may be a viable option.
• Er Just this bloke......

Pastor prays for Orlando Survivors to Die (Link through for full story if you feel you can take it)

• And then this man got to take his children to their murdered mother's funeral.

Listen - never mind in or out of Europe - don't tell me you can't hear the clippy-cloppy of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse as well - a bit.

Ashamed

I have been avoiding the Internet a bit. I've also been avoiding debates around the referendum. I shouldn't do really. I have been a classic undecided and wanted as much information as possible. Immigration is an issue obviously as is the economy. The democratic process or otherwise in the EU is a concern for anyone. Yet I have been unable to engage as I should. Who was it do you think? Who was it that sat around a table and decided that it was going to be all bets off. That debate was going to be a nasty, untruthful thing that only the strong would survive? Who thought that we could then call this the cut and thrust of politics? I just haven't been able to bear it. People with expertise on economics or democracy have simply been shouted down by the other side. People have said whatever they wanted and no-one has been able to call them out on it. A lady in the hospital where HOH works said she was going to vote out because all the Syrian refugees are flooding the Health Service and making the queues long. She had seen it on the telly. Normal political thinking has been killed stone dead in this campaign. Partly because we really have no idea what will happen if we leave. This gap in our knowledge has been filled with nasty words and threats on both sides. It is, however, my personal belief, that any team with Nigel Farage on it must deal with the thing they let loose. I wonder how the people on the Exit Team - many of whom are thoughtful people with challenging things to say have made their personal peace with this poster?

I don't know why but whenever I look into these poor people's faces, I keep seeing Jesus there, because that is assuredly where he would be with the terrorised and the dispossessed. It was his natural home.

It has been horrible and there are people I will never, ever want to see on TV again. My personal belief is that, for some politicians, it has nothing to do with Europe but it is opportunism of the worst sort. A chance to clear out people standing in their way in their party, with no actual thought for the country and how things will affect it. 
And now an MP is dead. One of the brightest and the best. Killed at the hands of someone with longstanding mental illness who maybe, just maybe, picked up some of the underlying tone of what was going on. I don't know of course. I saw the BBC Political Head Person,  Laura Kuenssberg saying that this was the most vicious campaign that she had ever covered and that this death may well give people pause and make them think before they speak. I admire her optimism. I don't share it. 

Voluntary

Out and about on a school night which is very unusual. I was invited - along with a team of volunteers where I work, to the Plymouth Guild Volunteers Award night. (Actually that isn't precisely what it was called but there were so many words in the title that I have forgotten them but you get the gist.) I need to point out that I do not volunteer where I work but I did get an actual separate invitation  to the event as I am Head Honcho and all round Life and Soul of the Party.
We didn't win and I am not surprised as we were playing out of our league. I mean, our volunteers are awesome but we were up against people who had built entire national charities in their spare time just because it was their passion. One gentleman was just entering his fiftieth year of volunteering. I did a lot of clapping and a bit of snivelling and felt really humble and really pleased to be in the same room as these people.
It is probably my age but sometimes, when I see people pouting into phones all flippin day long or being apparently willing to do ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING to get on some poxy reality show, after which the vast majority of contestants will sink without trace after walking the red carpet at the Toenail Clipping of the Year Awards, I have been known to get a little downhearted. However, this week, I have listened to a ninety year old lady who started volunteering when she retired because "Well you can't just sit around doing nothing when people need you, can you?" I also watched a son accept his father's award - given posthumously - for tutoring a young man to two silver medals at the Special Olympics, even when unwell with the disease that killed him, and I am comforted, that mankind is not full of shallow, annoying, self centred twonks but there are amazing people doing amazing things, quietly, all the time. And it maketh me glad.

Big C Little C

For the newly diagnosed..

Nothing will ever be the same again. That much is certainly true. You will mourn and mourn long and hard for the life that you have lost and that is ok. But there are some things that I would like to tell you - some things that I discovered during my own journey. I have found these things to be true - for me anyway and I would hope that they may help you.

You have joined a club that you never wanted to be a member of. It has probably surprised you just how much is going on in cancer land - much of it positive and hopeful. But really you would rather not have known - not ever - not really. I remember a newly diagnosed friend whispering to me about how annoyed she was about some friends running marathons for her. Because although she knew they were being kind, she didn't want to be that person that they were being kind to. She didn't want to be there. She has since run several marathons herself, but at the beginning she couldn't, not then. She had to accept, as all the diagnosed and those who love them must, that life has changed forever. Yet this change, though so terrible (in the full sense of the word) has so much in it that will be good. You will see things with new eyes. Gratitude will surprise you when you least expect it. Nothing will ever be measured in the same way that it was before. Some of it, and this is difficult to believe now, will be better. It will be richer, stronger and more clear sighted. You will wonder why you ever worried about the things you worried about. You will be taken aback by the amount of love you feel for those you love. 

You will learn to be patient but you will be less accepting of religious rubbish. "All things work together for good" is not a trite throw-away line to be delivered by someone who is trying to say the right thing. It is a strong wall to hide behind in times of deep, deep trouble but it is not an easy wall to get to. To learn to say this and mean it comes out of experience, an experience of seeing amazing things happen in deep and dark circumstances. Take the kindness that people offer because you will gain strength from it. Kindness is a fruit of the Spirit and therefore a supernatural thing. Let people love you, bake pies, do your ironing, take your kids out. This will help practically and somehow, in some deep way, you will actually gain strength from it. 

Speaking of the supernatural, I would say, take all the treatment that is offered to you but do not forget the power of God. He does not play odds or percentages. My own survival percentages were very low - I would not get past five years. That was eighteen years ago. Learn to look for him in all your dark circumstances. Now is one of the toughest times. So much time being spent being called into doctors rooms to hear results or sitting on plastic chairs in hospital corridors or waiting in rooms for the curtain to be pulled back as the consultant sweeps in. You think that you will never laugh again - laugh properly - not for the benefit of calming someone who you love. You will though. It will take you by surprise probably. But you will feel joy again. A different kind of joy but joy nonetheless. 

The truth is that despite the worst possible diagnosis, there is still a lot of living to be done. It is a different life and everything in it will be measured differently, but it is still there to be lived and you must make sure that you continue to live it.