Sometimes Peace

Nigel

Best Society

“When I was a child, I thought,
Casually, that solitude
Never needed to be sought.
Something everybody had,
Like nakedness, it lay at hand,
Not specially right or specially wrong,
A plentiful and obvious thing
Not at all hard to understand.

Then, after twenty, it became
At once more difficult to get
And more desired -- though all the same
More undesirable; for what
You are alone has, to achieve
The rank of fact, to be expressed
In terms of others, or it's just
A compensating make-believe.

Much better stay in company!
To love you must have someone else,
Giving requires a legatee,
Good neighbours need whole parishfuls
Of folk to do it on -- in short,
Our virtues are all social; if,
Deprived of solitude, you chafe,
It's clear you're not the virtuous sort.

Viciously, then, I lock my door.
The gas-fire breathes. The wind outside
Ushers in evening rain. Once more
Uncontradicting solitude
Supports me on its giant palm;
And like a sea-anemone
Or simple snail, there cautiously
Unfolds, emerges, what I am."

Philip Larkin, 1922-1985

Nigel

My Jailor And My Liberator

Top judge Alan Goldsack QC who is retiring at the end of May

pictured in his chambers at Sheffield Crown Court 21 May 2013

‘Remove children from criminal families’, says Sheffield judge

http://www.thestar.co.uk/news/crime/remove-children-from-criminal-families-says-sheffield-judge-1-5708134

Nigel

I Joined The Underclass

Some Ten Years Ago, I Joined The Underclass - The Time Is Coming To Report The Reality.

Nigel