Cycle

Merry Christmas everybody. I’m currently sat here waiting for my son to drag himself downstairs on Christmas morning, so as it looks like I’ve got a while, I thought I’d do a quick blog posting. The cats obviously felt I was missing getting woken up at 6am as I would have been on Christmas morning when he was much younger, so they landed on me at that time. Literally.

Had a pleasant surprise on Christmas Eve when I found out I had a short piece of writing, Cycle, published in Cynefin Road’s latest Zine, Audacity. I’d been struggling with the chapter I’d been writing in Perspective, when I saw a request for contributions on my Twitter feed. So I took a break, and without thinking too much, just put a stream of consciousness on the subject down into the page. It was largely (but not accurately) based on the events of this year for me. At the end, I felt it was a bit too bleak, so added an optimistic final line and a title which implied the same optimism coupled with a degree of cynicism. It felt very personal, and captured a fleeting glimpse of how I was feeling at the time. Here’s to a more optimistic 2018!

Full disclosure: the first line is nicked gratuitously from Julian Cope's song The Greatness And Perfection Of Love, which happened to be playing as I started writing.

Cynefin Road came to my attention earlier this year when I bought J J Patrick’s Alternative War, a book I’d highly recommend to everyone. I’m really glad that the knowledge of Russia’s interference in western democracies through the use of social media is slowly coming into wider public domain. Even our beloved foreign secretary admitted they’d interfered with Brexit this week, although of course he deems it unsuccessful (as he was a beneficiary of this interference). Over the coming years, we’ll look back on this time and realise what a huge debt of gratitude we owe to journalists like J J Patrick and Carole Cadwalladr at the Guardian. Let’s hope 2018 helps bring this country back to the light.

I’m currently reading another of Cynefin Road’s books, In Limbo. It’s a series of testimonies focusing on the effect the Brexit vote has had on the lives of EU nationals living in the U.K. Not very far in yet, but it’s already a sobering and emotional experience. A simple X in a box can negatively impact so many people’s lives in such a short time. Let’s also hope 2018 brings more cheer for all those affected by the nationalistic streak that’s rampant in the U.K. right now.

I hear signs of life life from above, so once more may I wish you all a Merry Christmas.