i'll talk to you, if you promise not to tut and walk away. i think it was george bernard shaw who said he liked humanity, but he wasn't all that keen on human beings. somebody else, probably equally wise, said exactly the opposite. personally, a lot of the time i'm not all that keen on either. i met my friend and her new baby in birmingham today. i travelled in on the bus, thoughtlessly placing her christmas present (yes, i know) on the seat next to me, and leaving it there when i got off. about a hundred yards up the road i realised, pegged it round the corner to where it would stop about three minutes later, and managed to persuade the driver to let me on to get my belongings. i'd bought her four nice little dish thingies in a pretty box. when i got back on, the box had been opened, and three of the dishes had gone. the last one had been broken. an old man gave me the box. he said he'd got on the stop before and found it like that. three minutes. 180 seconds. too long to trust in human beings for, clearly. there were shiney silver stars all over the seat. yes, there will be some relevant content eventually. i don't like birmingham centre. i'm not keen on dealing with shoppy-people. they have bags, and hair piled on their heads. they have hard faces and they pull them into strange shapes at me. they make me sad, most of the time. once, i got off the bus, and then just got back on it again and went home. not today. i had a mission. black box recorder tickets... the academy ticket office is a particularly frightening place. today, there were lots of NU METAL KIDZ outside and i slunk past them and faced Evil Rude Girl in the box office. and i stuck up for myself when she was rude to me. she tutted and muttered about not saying 'please'. i don't often do that. i told her that if she pulled faces at people, she couldn't be surprised if they didn't say 'please' or 'thank you' and i asked her if she was always so rude. and then i left, with my tickets, shaking a bit. she'll be there, on monday, pulling her faces twice as hard. i've never liked confrontation. the city streets are mean, and they scare me. i want to pull my hood over my face, and shrink back beneath it. i want to exist somewhere warm, dark, womb-like. i want the only things i hear to be a heartbeat, preferably my own. sometimes. other times, i want the sunshine, and a hand to hold. and if we want these things we have to face the world. a thousand miles away: the man who runs the country has a secret service which routinely kidnaps and tortures those suspected of political crimes. sometimes, the secret service tortures children to get confessions from their parents. sometimes, wives are raped to extract confessions from husbands. soon, they're going to have metal falling from the sky onto their homes. that should bring some perspective, but it doesn't. i worry about my day, and how hard it seems to have become to face people. the thing that brought me here in the first place, the moment i fell in love with belle and sebastian, was the moment i heard them singing about the boy with naivety. oh, they always reach a sorry ending. they always get it in the end. i felt like that, once. i felt like there was love in everyone and everything. and i still think that might be the way to succeed. it is mightier than swords. but its hard to believe that, day in day out. its hard to believe in the goodness of people when even the tiny moments shatter themselves in your face. the shards wriggle around your brain. can you believe, with a brain full of glass? imagine sitting in a bomb shelter, if you have one, hearing the missiles raining all around, knowing that the next one could be you. perspective doesn't come in easy, measured doses. it comes in twenty ton packages, immediate, inescapable. perhaps i should be glad to be without it. whilst i don't have it, belle and sebastian are amongst the things that make my strange world make more sense. they help with the little things. it's the little things that crush, as a not-very-famous singer once opined.. but then, he was from scotland, not iraq. if you live in baghdad its probably the big things that crush. i'm thankful to be here. i'm thankful for the softness i find here. i'm thankful that there's somewhere to hide from the world. i'm thankful that you care hard enough to march for people on the other side of the world. sometimes i agree with you, sometimes i don't. this week i've changed my views on global politics more often than i've changed my underwear. thank heavens for semi-disposable opinions and paper underwear. but i'm pleased that you care. it reminds me that people do. we have to, don't we? we have to care about something. we have to cry at endings, sad or otherwise. we have to stay alive inside. or we've already lost the battle. peace, my dears. whatever you take that to mean xx ian ps. sorry, but i do have to mention this. it was mentioned on-list, and its vitally important. jim, or anyone else that is thinking of it, PLEASE don't go to iraq and be a human shield, no matter how strong your views are - twelve years ago british people in iraq were kidnapped and used as exactly that. they had no choice in the matter. as we're seeing right now, history has this way of repeating itself. you could find yourself in a far worse situation than you possibly imagined. +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. 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