Rowan Tree and Red Thread

(lifted from Warren Ellis)

I'm home from work to mind the kids. Their mother's in bed, tucked away to help recover from some vomiting bug.

I have a cup of tea. I'm sitting on the steps in the garden watching the kids play, puttering about getting into everything.

It's a very pleasant afternoon, for me at least.

Once again the drunken antics that pass for local colour round these parts have pressed themselves to the front of the crowd of cultural events here in Cork during our year as European Capital of Culture. Quite literally pressed forward, in fact, as a couple of nights ago some assholes bashed in our front door as they loped down the street looking for things to vandalise.

sammywol and I were shocked speechless for a moment. I never realised that was more than figure of speech but I was briefly stunned into both silence and immobility. When I got up to check the door the lad who had done it were off down the road. I suppose I should be grateful that they just bashed the door and moved on. I don't imagine for a second that I (or my wife) would put up more than a token resistance to anyone who actually decided to break into the house and attack or rob us.

I'm unsettled, to say the least. I like the house we're living in. I like our immediate neighbours. I love that I can walk to work from here. But I hate that I'm made to feel uncomfortable where we live and I hate that we can't afford to move. I think the worst of it is that I can feel myself becoming more conservative.

To cap it all, only a couple of days before the business with the door we discovered that someone had vandalised our car, shattering the passenger side wing mirror with a thrown apple. I have to admire their accuracy, whoever they were, if not their civic-mindedness. What did the early agriculturalists, when founding the first cities, think they were doing moving a bunch of contrary, easily bored primates into close proximity with strangers (and northsiders)?