MEMOIRS OF A HUSK

Listening to Delius’ A Walk to the Paradise Garden on the wonderful BBC Radio 3. This evocative piece of music transports me, on a wave of that curious emotion which combines joy, wonder, rapture with a sad awareness that things must and will change. I heard it the first time – or so my memory tells me, but we know how fickle memory can be – while sitting alone in my parents’ car.

I’d driven out of Bradford to escape the city heat, but also my worries about imminent exam results. I was parked somewhere close to Ilkley Moor. It was high summer. Hot summer. Tall grasses golden under a relentless sun. No breath of breeze. The only movement insects, butterflies, my thoughts. And the music.

I sat feeling exalted, yet fearful. There I was, surrounded by beauty, listening to beauty, being part of a scene that I would never forget, but which was already fleeting. Already I was worrying about the next week, the next month, the next years. My future crowding in on the gorgeousness of that day, that music, that elevation through music to the heights of emotion. And a warm breeze rose, just a light sigh of a breeze, stirring the golden grasses. Or perhaps that’s my imagination creating a scene I want to have lived.

Decades later I sit here, in my home surrounded on two sides by trees – pines, weeping birches, rowans – thanks to the golf course. Our living rooms are upstairs and as I sit listening to Delius I look out and see birches. Blue sky. A fair, warm, day. Summery, but past that point where we know it is waning. Where the night is beginning to regain its strength. When it feels just like that day near Ilkley Moor.

I’ve had a troubled week. Troubles that were as nothing to those of so many people in this community here in Southport, on the north west coast of England.

Southport.

Sadly, the name may be newly familiar to you, as of this week. It’s not a huge town, 90,000 or so residents, but this week it was visited by tragedy. On Monday three little girls were happy at a dance event, their futures lying ahead of them – as did my 17 year old future on that high summer day. But these little girls were all under the age of ten. And they were all murdered. Stabbed to death.

Several others were subjected to this terrifying knife attack. The other young girls and two adults who were seriously injured seem, we hope, to have made it through. One little girl has been able to return home. We await news of the others.

In the meantime we have learnt that the killer was a 17 year old boy from Cardiff, Wales, who moved here when he was six with his parents and older brother. And that his parents were originally from Rwanda. Yes, that ‘safe’ place the previous British government wanted to deport asylum seekers to, people who might well be fleeing persecution, death threats, war.

The Rwandan origin of the parents of the boy – soon to be young man, 18 next week – should be immaterial. If they had been Irish or Scottish or perhaps even French or Spanish it would be unlikely it would be a matter of such import. But of course, there are people seeking every opportunity to indulge their hatred of the ‘other’ whom they assume, or want, to be a Muslim. An immigrant. A boat person.

The boy was born of Christian parents, that we now know. But this week, on the very day when this small town was holding a peaceful vigil, attended by thousands, hoodlums and thugs chose to ‘protest’ – to riot – and attack, among other things, the local mosque (I didn’t even know there was one, we don’t have a big Muslim population). And they attacked the police who had, with the other emergency services, been dealing with the traumatic scenes and aftermath of the killings. Dozens of them were injured.

Our community rallied around. By mid-morning next day walls were being rebuilt, streets had been cleared of debris, bricks, broken bottles, the detritus of thuggery and violence. Many local businesses rendered services for free and fundraisers were flooded with donations, including one for a convenience store that had been smashed up and looted for cigarettes and alcohol. A peaceful protest. Yes. Obviously.

You can find all the discussion of why and how the riot happened online, I’m not going through it all here. But even I could see it developing that day on social media. The sheer outright lying and misinformation abroad in the ether was outrageous. Proprietors of social media  – and certain politicians  – should hang their heads in shame.

I’m leaving it there – though here’s a link to a report by Hope Not Hate if you’d like to see how things developed https://hopenothate.org.uk/2024/07/31/the-far-right-and-the-southport-riot-what-we-know-so-far/  – because I want to move on to my week – to the personal impact on someone who was not closely involved.

I go to a weekly co-working hub 10 miles away for a morning of work, companionship, chatter and lunch. Yesterday I found myself almost in tears as I talked to the two adults then present – one of whom had her nine year old daughter with her.

I was so upset I failed to think of the little girl’s feelings. Her mum has been very kind – I apologised immediately on WhatsApp so her daughter didn’t hear even more to trouble her. They’d already talked about it and, that same day, after her daughter asked her how she could keep safe, her mum talked it through with her. And made some practical changes I won’t go into. Lots of mums and dads will be doing the same thing.

Today I am still sad.

Am I also angry?

I thought I would be, but no, I am, I think, quite deeply distressed. And bear in mind I’m way out on the fringes of this event.

The context is important. The prof was away for most of the week, deeply immersed in research with Belgian colleagues, and I was not comfortable talking to anyone else. Yet.

On the night of the riots I was awoken, well after midnight, by an ambulance siren. The sound itself isn’t unusual as we’re not far from a turn-off to the local hospital. But this was loud. Going to the window I saw the ambulance outside my house, where it turned round before speeding back up our cul de sac. I guessed that satnav instructions had directed it to turn the wrong way –  emergency services had been called in from out of town so it may have been a crew unfamiliar with the route.

I slept very badly, as I have all week. Next morning I heard that the emergency services had been working until gone 1.30 am. All this in a town that was traumatised. A town where loved ones and friends were dealing with hideous anxiety as they awaited news about the fate of those badly injured.

Yesterday afternoon, three days after the killings, I went to a new supermarket towards one edge of town.  A huge – really huge –police van stood at a far end of the car park. As I shopped, out on the road emergency sirens blared out several times and each time I noticed I was not alone in stopping and looking out through the windows. The supermarket is not far from the hospital, so this is to be expected. But we have become hyper-sensitive to sirens.

I was told by a ‘friend’ who has gone over to what I regard as the ‘dark side’ that this and other ‘protests’ that are being organised and incited elsewhere are justified, a response to being ignored. The justification is that ‘they’ (guess who) have been getting away with crimes and the mainstream media and establishment have been covering it up, partly through lefty woke racial sensitivity. Or whatever. This is what they’re protesting. Oh – and immigrants in general. Of course.

Sirens have just gone blaring by the end of our road, many of them. We are tense, wondering, what now? It will take even those barely affected, like me, some time to recover from this awful crime and the unforgivable riots that followed, but, meanwhile, I am going to try my best not to hate, but to hope.