Hate

Something very beautiful and something very ugly took place in our local park this morning. It’s a fairly non-descript day; not as cold but grey and damp and I set off to walk the dog just before 8. The park was quiet and I was enjoying the peace and spending time with Mr P who as usual was into everything…

I heard them before I saw them, the unmistakable honk of geese in flight. I looked up and saw a 6 of them flying overhead, very low, and I watched delighted as they honked off in to the distance. It was incredible how low they flew and it really was very beautiful.

As you round the top end of the park, there is large brick building – used by the police I believe – and the back of the building (which faces out onto the park) can be a magnet for taggers. Today there was something entirely more sinister than some 14-year-old’s initials. Someone with black paint had daubed swastikas, the SS insignia, the German word for Jew (Juden) and what looked like a stick figure being gassed. I was shocked and sickened. Previously we’ve had nothing more troublesome than “NFS” (which apparently stands for Neva Fully Sober, which is actually quite funny). I’ve just phoned Lewisham council about it and because it’s racist graffiti they should have someone out to clean it off within a couple of hours. Hate – not just race hate either – never really goes away. There’s always some scum that wants to hurt someone else for whatever reason, and if there is no good reason (and there never is) they’ll make something up. It could be your race, your sexuality, your sports team, because you’re a woman, or just because you’re in the way. Tomorrow, when we go for our walk, the graffiti will hopefully be gone, but the sentiment still remains. The slack jawed idiot that did it is still out there cranking up their badly damaged brains to occasionally spit out some nasty invective about someone or some group of people that they’ve decided they don’t like.

It’s not a beautiful park, in fact it’s quite plain but I much prefer it when I spot the robin that lives there, the woodpeckers that work high up in the trees, the parakeets that shriek and squawk, geese honking overhead, foxes that have their babies by the bowling green, the large mushrooms that colonise rotting and fallen trees, crunchy autumn leaves and the squirrels that drive all the dogs nuts as they dart from tree to tree… that’s beautiful. Humans being pig ignorant is not beautiful. There is no rhyme and reason for it, there are no excuses, it’s just plain wrong.

PS. Don't forget to get your poppy. It's not just to remember the dead (the same people who died to eradicate hate and bigotry and terror), it's to support the living.