Founder's Thoughts: The Clay Pigeon Shoot

A hotter than July Sunday morning in the UK

In the distance instead of the gentle bleat of sheep and church bells, I hear gunshots now. A bunch of amateurs practicing for war or letting out their frustrations safely by shooting clay pigeons. They will drive home afterwards in expensive fuel guzzling cars no doubt. They don't go to church or temple, mosque or synagogue (nor do I), because religion itself and all it's ethics have been corrupted to such an extend that few will dare to trust any leader of it.

I don't think we are supposed to know if there is a God or not for no sensible God would wish to trust mankind with that level of information given what we've done to our own species and all others since we were arrogant enough to suppose we could think straight at all. It all seems rather irrelevant to me either way given so many wars have centred around religion due to the corruption of it's extreme exponents who run it who are only ever interested in power and bending others to their way of thinking. Which version is right? Maybe all of them, maybe none - they all basically say the same thing anyway but no one can keep to that simple edict for more than five minutes without resulting to huffs and puffs of indignation about something invariably insignificant to the cosmos as a whole. Some even believe there is no cosmos no doubt.

Outside my home car continue to speed way over the speed limit of 30 miles per hour and people continue to overheat in what to me is torture for weather conditions being almost continuously hot and sticky and seemingly (especially while ill) over 30 degrees. My optimum operating temperature is about 21 degrees and refreshing sunshine, but if we have a month like in spring or autumn we are to count ourselves lucky now in the UK. The natural world doesn't mind, it's used to losses caused by us; it's used to having to adapt and mutate far faster than we are, except for those species that live longer than us of course, such as trees.

So where do my fellow humans in this tiny town all speed to on a Sunday morning at 11am if not to their place of worship. Ah... well..., here's what's interesting... they speed to the worship of their obsessions one of which is speed itself. It doesn't need to a car that they worship either for them to break the highway code of speeding either. It can be work... desperately trying to ensure that their employer can have no grounds to dismiss them in a recession. I've done it myself as a care worker, although at 6.40am on a Sunday morning the roads are more or less clear so the reality is the biggest danger is to myself after not getting much time to sleep between shifts, or agreeing to cover a colleague who's ill at no notice.

One could be speeding home after church to finish a vital report, or from picking up children from some activity or to deliver them to another. One could be speeding to the pub, to ensure someone waiting doesn't get fed up doing so to just leave. Speeding to get medication for someone seriously ill, speeding to a celebration, speeding to a sport, art activity, gardening club, car boot sale or seminar on history. Speeding to do more shopping.

I am old enough to remember the days when nothing was open on a Sunday and we had half day closing on Wednesdays. Now that nothing shuts, nothing stops. Speeding to get home to write an email you've been meaning to do for months because you forgot your grandparents birthday and they fought in the war so you could whizz around like a lunatic. If not in the armed forces watching friends die and get permanently disfigured, then at home seeing family, neighbours all known sources of comfort get obliterated while making do with what one had. A new acquaintance of mine who served under Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery didn't speed as he went to a funeral again so missed his gardening club. His wife no doubt packed sandwiches in case they broken down... better sandwiches than they could possibly have dreamt of during the war with better tea too one hopes, but with pensions today and how we disrespect all those who did that for us (i.e. all our parents and grand parents and great grand parents) by moaning... who knows. It just makes me want to weep for all eternity is all I know.

Meanwhile the younger generation still get angry at the injustice of having no work, or being born into poverty and moan about having only £70 this week to spend on DVDs, clothes, sports and technology gadgets such a phones to record where they've been as they haven't the time to just soak in the atmosphere and they simply must tell their friends who are not with them. They simply must tell them even though those friends only parted from them 5 minutes ago to go shopping for more sushi to picnic in the same spot where a homeless person got moved on (outside a supermarket), for being unsightly and smelly all but a week ago. I know what I find unsightly and a stench, and I weep even more.

Even the kindest, most caring young person today needs a job having been overloaded with education and promises and this and that though can we really blame them for turning to drugs, prostitution or ending up in the funny farm to debate which way to end their lives? It's even worse if education failed to help them read or write. In Sweden kids are not ever hounded to learn anything... the result is they nearly all learn everything. Now I am sobbing.

Oh yes all this modern technology is so marvellous for now we have 1000 times the paperwork of before and can lose it twice as quick and NEVER find it and still we insist that we must have it, that it is better than before and plug ourselves into every day.

Backing onto my road are the homes of OAPs, you remember... oh I forgot, you don't have time to... (Old Age Pensioners, they include your grandparents who fought for you to get to be so stupid so you can squander your money and not do a thing to help anyone else fortunate... yes, them who sired YOUR parents who you no doubt hate and think talk rubbish too and you haven't the time of day for even to remember their birthdays), the resounding attitude from that lot is in effect "am I bovvered?", "whatever" and most of all "it's all a fucking game anyway and everything is crap." The only difference is they can not even be 'bovvered' to mention it anymore even when people rob them, rape them, run them over or beat, stab or shoot them. "Fine, they say... take it all then... I'm looking forward to dying if that's all you can do by way of show gratitude. Most people don't even remember when Remembrance Day is, let's face it."

I am sobbing uncontrollably now, but silently as one doesn't wish to disturb anyone. The clay pigeon shooting hasn't finished yet.

Of course in 'their day' they would as like as not smothered anyone deformed than spend money on trying to give them any quality of life, but then after two world wars with so many coming back injured seemingly beyond repair, they felt it might be worth a whirl to look after them too... a generation on, because their children said... "What's the difference between a person born with no limbs and one that loses them in an accident?" And they said, "what's the difference between a person born with a different way of thinking to one that has trouble thinking 'cos of a bullet or a speeding car." "Babies were victims of the war too you know!" they yelled.

I fear I might be disturbing the neighbourhood with my sobbing now.

And governments promised we would never do this again, but the Vikings and the Arabs still fear each other while they still trade, and the West and East still size each other up... just in case. But ALL governments have tried so hard since then not to let it happen again via the United Nations, the trouble is two and three generations on everyone does forget.

Taxing

We moan about all the taxes which funds education which we moan about.
It funds the maintenance of highways which we moan about.

It funds health care services that we not only moan about but try to cheat our way to the front of the queue so that some newborn child dies, and it being the only one those parents could ever have too - but hey, a bee sting can kill too... er not if the receptionist says it won't for they have to be trained to prioritise calls now.
Tax funds all our emergency services which increasingly have to put up with hoax callers and violent people.
As a care worker I was not allowed to send anyone to a naughty step if anyone happened to fling a chair at a colleague that resulted in their death. Fortunately I never had to, others regularly have that challenge often for less than minimum wage.

Tax funds all our Armed Forces to keep the world safe. The casualty figures from war have been steadily coming down, but we moan that we have any Armed Forces and why should we pay for it. Er... perhaps because such extremist views WILL lead to more suffering, prejudice, misery, torture, cruelty and uncontrolled chaos? Might that be a reason enough? Apparently not.

We moan about industrial sites when we want businesses to be able to work.
We moan about new housing estates when we can't even be bothered to use contraceptives when we DON'T want to have children nor cross our legs for five minutes while we go at it like sex starved rabbits.

We moan about abuse and crime and then clog up the courts with moans about who scratched you car and soon it will no doubt be who is to blame for your broken fingernail that you actually bite yourself. We moan about the colour of a person's skin, the work they do, their right to their interests and which sexual orientation they are. It's been scientifically proven that sexual orientation is determined before birth by newborns allocated the the wrong gender if born with no defined gender. What do you want to do get them aborted so you can moan about that too? We moan about children being adopted and taken away from abusive parents!!!

We moan about rapists but can't get enough ideas on how to vary sex, we moan that there are still paedophiles when it was only 100 years ago that any man could rape, beat and kill anyone or anything he liked on demand without anyone batting an eyelid so long as it did reach the public's attention as they something really would have to be done about it, huh? Yet greed and corruption... well, that's not fuelled by sex now is it? And we moan about all admin, the nasty sticky web (internet) and all our advances not working when we having wit to make time to make them do so properly, nor wit to enable them to do so safely.

Not that a matriarchal world would be any better unless you fancy a world dominated by Maggie Thatcher and Marta Hari sterotypes... the sad thing is most would.

We moan about communication when no one has time to communicate clearly and they can't even be bothered to try to understand anything in written, verbal or sign form anyway. EVEN in their own language.

It is now 12.30pm this hot Sunday afternoon. The clay pigeon shooting continues but traditionally the time for the roast to be nearly ready, but I do not feel like eating now.

I am wailing uncontrollably, but don[t know why. No one comes. All is as normal as ever.