A time for surprises

as four women discover when their evening is interrupted with a Midwinter Song...

The St Angela's girls continue to enjoy their trip, and a verdict is reached, in To Be in England...

In Their Own Words presents an After School Special...

We follow A Series of Unfortunate Encounters...

And finally, The Cat's Exam

We will be back, as always God Willing, on July the 7th, but until then I remain,

KP

Quite a week

So allow me to distract you from the political mess, first with the start of To Be in England, as the Angels hit North East London...

Meanwhile, a lady named Agnes McAdam experiences Amateur Hour...

And the China Doll Gang in their early days do something At First Sight...

While a young lady cannot even give A Word of Warning...

And Tull is back with Lucy's Lost Afternoon.

I will be back, as always God willing, on the 23rd, but until then I remain,

KP

Stand Proud

There are times in this world, in this life, when things happen that just make you speechless, that make you stop and think and wonder if there is anything you do that can make a difference to the world that we live in.  There have been a few in my own lifetime – hearing of the death of John Lennon, Challenger, the Dunblane massacre, and in line with most civilised people 9/11.

This last fortnight in the UK, we’ve had two of those incidents.  A fanaticism that says the way to bring people to their world view is to deliberately set out to perpetrate a slaughter of the innocents both illustrates the evil at the heart of that fanaticism, and also illustrates the essential futility of that argument.  They were young people – children – at a concert celebrating life, and instead…

On the day, I made a short tweet in support of the people who had gone to help, and in sympathy for those who had lost someone, but somehow that was inadequate.  I freely admit, I found it hard to concentrate on anything for the days following that – I have grown children, but one lived in Manchester for a time, and the other is about to leave for University, and you picture what you would do if it was them.

Then this last week I’ve been ill, and had a bit of time to think, try to write – and I could not.  I could not get out the stories I wanted to tell, and I wasn’t sure why.  And then there were the events in London last night, and my heart was cold again.

And that was the problem – my heart was cold.  I had lost sight of an essential fact, but others have reminded me of it today.  If we are going to show them we are wrong, being afraid and sitting on our derrieres is not the answer.  We have to stand up, and we have to be proud to stand up and show them they are wrong, that they cannot make us afraid.

That whatever faults I have, at my heart, at my core, there is more than anything love for my fellow man, and that love cannot be allowed to dim.  So do not allow it to dim, do not let your light hide under a bushel.

Which brings me to this – KP, Kev Pickering is a nom de plume, but if I am going to stand up, I need to stand up as Kev Pickering and as myself.  But for various reasons, I need to continue to write under this name.  If you want to know who I am in real life (whatever that means) then click here.  If you don’t. don’t.  But we need to stand up and be counted.

New stories will be here, God Willing, next Friday.  Until then, I remain here, now and always, 

KP