This is more of a personal post and I am going to try and not rant but can’t promise anything…

In 2013, 4 years ago, I gave up my full time job, sold the house and set off on an unknown journey of storytelling and writing. A few months earlier I had gone to Nepal with my son and we had walked for a month up to a height of over 5600 metres. It was at the very top end of what I could do physically and it was a life changing experience in many ways, not least because we went in monsoon season so were clambering over land slides and we didn’t die but it came pretty close. Nearly dying makes you look at life differently. I also realised that our physical health, although we can help it along, involves a great deal of good fortune. I returned to work and the popular refrain, found in many offices, of ‘When I retire I’m going to…’ suddenly rang a bit hollow. It made me wonder what exactly I was waiting for. Did I really have to wait another 20 years to do what I really wanted to do even though I did also enjoy my work? I was 47 years old at that time.

I decided to take my own fate into my hands and throw the cards up in the air (let’s see how many cliches I can fit in here). I decided that, having experienced how amazing it was to have a functioning body, it was too risky to wait until retirement to do stuff. What if my body packed in earlier than that and I never got to do anything? I also decided that, at the age of 47, I was young enough to take some time out of, so called, normal life, and then be able to get back into employment a few years later. Wrong!

Blindly I set off into the sunset in my old post office van with my trusty lurcher by my side. No job, no house and happy as happy can be. I studied storytelling and started telling stories hither and thither and this opened up a whole new world that I had never known existed. I wrote, and had published, two books, something that I had always wanted to do. I became involved in volunteering with refugees, another life changing experience. The money was trickling in but it was flowing out because that is what money seems to do. A time had come to go back to work but with a whole set of new things that I had learnt along the way and, in theory, finding work should not be a problem but it has not turned out that way.

It would seem that at 47 it is true that you can pack your job in and find another job but past the age of 50, this is no longer true. I had heard all the statistics and rumours that women over the age of 50 struggle to find work but I didn’t listen or, rather, I didn’t believe it. Over the past year or so I have applied for jobs, been for a couple of interviews, although most applications don’t get as far as the interview stage, and nothing. I have applied for jobs for which I am definitely qualified and a million other reasons why there should be no reason why I shouldn’t get the job. Apart from my age. So, I set about asking people of their experiences and asking various employers of their opinions and, yes, it is definitely true. Women over the age of 50 are way less likely to be employed. In fact, statistically they are the least likely people to be employed. Men over the age of 50 also do not get a great deal but it’s not as bad as women. It has, naively or not, come as a bit of a shock.

I have searched articles and statistics and forums and blogs to find out why. There are many articles about the fact that this phenomena exists but there is no actual reason why. I am none the wiser. There are soooo many people saying that this is, indeed, the reality but no reason why. I would dearly love someone to enlighten us all, brutal honesty and all. In theory, women over the age of 50 should be good to have around. Years of experience, generally no young family around and dramas reduce dramatically as the years go by. I have spoken to women who, also, are not even getting to the interview stage even though they are ideally placed for the job and, at the age of 50, there are at least 15 years of work left to do before getting to this mythical retiring age which is rapidly disappearing into the horizon anyway.

What is going on?? There is loads of evidence that points to age being the only factor for not getting an interview and how come I didn’t know any of this? Have I been living in a vacuum? Does everyone else know this? Will someone enlighten me please?

Also if anyone is able to offer an old codger a job that would be great too…

On the Isle of Lesvos there are currently around 65,000 refugees stuck on the island. I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again, mainly for my own benefit to keep trying to get my head round the fact. The winter is, apparently, a particularly harsh one and this has been born out by the recent deaths from hypothermia. Many families have been moved into hotels and there is also a Greek naval ship at the port that houses some 150 men of a whole host of different nationalities. Everyone is waiting and waiting for a response to their asylum claim, for a response to anything really that will mean that they can move on with their lives. The naval ship sits in the water tantalisingly close to the ferry that leaves daily bound for Athens, where they would love to be able to go but can’t. Just wait.

While we were there we managed to do a distribution to the men on the ship. A joint effort between Hope and Aid Direct, The Truck Shop, Help Refugees and I’ve probably missed out some vital other people. One truck was kitted out with rails and coats were sorted and sized and hung up. Same with sweatshirts that were boxed up into different sizes and packs with hat, scarf, gloves and socks were prepared. It sounds easy but it takes hours and manpower and humour. Another truck was kitted out with stock to replace the rails as they emptied. The whole point was for people to be able to take their time and choose what they wanted, try it on and maintain some dignity and humanity in this whole sorry mess. We were not allowed to board the ship and doing distributions is not hugely popular so we parked round the corner and did what was meant to be a covert operation but was very busy.

As there was so much waiting to be had and it was cold, a member of the team, Bernie, had the genius idea of taking a burner down and some pots and making tea for people as they waited. This not only warmed people up and gave everyone a chance to chat but also took some of the angst out of waiting. The whole thing about having nothing means that when something is being offered there is an added tinge of desperation in case said offerings run out before you get to them. As we all drank tea together it meant that the angst melted somewhat and people then went on to choose some stuff with a more cheery and relaxed air. The atmosphere in general was one of laughter, chat and people’s stories that never ever fail to leave me utterly flabbergasted and humbled.

One young lad talked about his journey to turkey through Lebanon and he then walked across Syria. His travel friend was shot and killed as they went through Syria and he mimed having to duck and run as he made his journey. He is 20 years old. Two young men showed their injuries from the police. It seems to be an international sport at the moment, having a physical and every other manner of pop at the vulnerable. Each a story of resilience and courage, the very same resilience and courage that is normally applauded but that the media are telling us to fear. Every single person was courteous and funny and there was laughter ringing in the air despite the bitter cold of the night. It also showed that putting in an amount of preparation paid off in being able to offer a distribution that was organised and dignified. One young man said that it was the first nice thing that someone had done for him since starting his journey. It was a joyous evening that left everyone feeling as though we had managed to do something positive and that the aid had got to those who really needed it.

The stories were also shared with a level of resignation as each person told how long they had been stuck on the island – 3 months, 5 months, 9 months and with no solution in sight. Just wait. Waiting has been a feature of this trip. Hurry up and Wait. Quick rush to the border, scrabble about for documents and wait, sometimes really really wait. Quick hurry up and get everything to the warehouse and wait. Load up the trucks in a hurry and wait. Unload the trucks in a hurry and wait. A massively diluted version of what our friends from so many different countries are having to do. Hurry up and leave their homes and then wait. Hurry up and register and wait.

Hurry up and wait is also what we all have to do in the world at the moment. Hurry up and do something about the madness that is so very quickly surrounding us all. Hurry up and make our voices heard that the cruelty being carried out is not in our names. Hurry up and be super kind to our fellow humans and then wait to see what pans out. It doesn’t feel as though we have a great deal of time to mess about to just stand by and watch the circus that ‘leaders’ around the world are creating.

We left the island the next day and, as we were boarding the ferry, a number of the young men came out to wave us goodbye. They waved their thanks and I think that I speak for everyone involved on the convoy when I say that it was an incredibly moving moment. At least it was one hurry up and wait that had been a resounding success. The whole evening, and indeed the whole trip and movements happening across the world, can be summed up by the words of Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

We have been on the Isle of Lesvos for a few days now, sorting out aid, unloading and loading and unloading and loading, distributing aid and generally doing what needs to be doing. A contact had managed to find a warehouse to rent for a while and all of the stuff is piled high in there in categories that make things easy to find and easy to distribute. All of this takes time. There are some people who, as ever, are the ones who are very quietly just ever present in these situations. People doing the incredibly unglamorous work of manning a dusty warehouse in the middle of an industrial estate that could be anywhere rather than on a beautiful Greek island. These people do this all unseen and unheard, young people who have given up whatever they were doing and have chosen to man dusty warehouses to their bit for the world.

The situation in Lesvos, and Greece in general, changes by the hour. These people are pawns in the game of someone and are at the whim of rules that make no sense and can change like the weather. As it has been so cold many families have been housed in hotels and homes for the duration of the cold period. Apparently it is a particularly hard winter. There is, however, a camp called Moria Camp, the conditions of which defy belief or it should do anyway. I realise that my threshold of shock has been raised somewhat over the past couple of years.

The Moria Camp was an old prison and still has fences and razor wire to remind everyone that they are in a prison and some brand new razor wire and fences thrown in for good measure. People are LOCKED IN to this place and the conditions are less than savoury. Some are in the prison accommodation which is a Greek prison that has lain disused for some time so it doesn’t take a great stretch of the imagination to picture the level of luxury. Many are on the outside in tents. I know I’ve gone on about the cold but it really is cold and people are quite literally freezing to death. Yesterday we heard that there had been another death at the Moria Camp. I went there with some others and was talking to one young man who is stuck there. He was saying how frightened he and the others in there are. How terrifying it is to be treated so inhumanely, to know that they are now in the hands of a Europe that does not care about them. In the last week two young men, previously fit and healthy young men, have died of the cold. Actually and quite literally frozen to death in a small tent designed to be slept in on a balmy summer weekend with friends and family. Not for someone to live in in these bitterly cold conditions and especially not someone who is seeking a place of safety. Suspend all judgements and imagine that it was your child/brother/father/cousin/best friend who has frozen to death because the relative authorities are too busy booting the political football about to give a damn about whether they live or die. Only two large NGO’s are allowed inside this camp and the authorities, i.e. the NGO’s allow them just one blanket. One blanket in this cold! A tent in this cold! I can very well imagine not being able to survive in this. It is shocking.

Yesterday morning another 4 young men died inside the razor wire fences of the camp. Apparently asphyxiated from a some kind of heater trying to stay warm. I don’t know whether that is a gas heater or from burning plastic or what, it’s hard to know what is what. Tensions are rising understandably and the authorities are rapidly trying to find places for people to be. Places miraculously materialising where previously there were none. The conditions defy belief or I wish they did at least. I have begun to realise that there are no depths to which the ‘authorities’ will not sink. Just the actions of Trump within one week of being ‘in charge’ is an indication of what is possible.

Yesterday 3 of us went to a hotel where there are 100 children with their families and we did some face painting which was chaos but at least the children were laughing for a bit and it made me feel better anyway. The parents got a little bit of a break. I see a change, though, in the eyes of the people. Before people were desperate but there was hope. Some of these people have been here for a year waiting and waiting for their fate to be revealed to them by an inefficient and inhumane system. People waiting to be reunited with loved ones, to start their lives, children waiting to go to school. I don’t ask people where they are going anymore because it is almost unbearable to see the quiet shrug of shoulders that is the reply. A reply that before would have been full of enthusiasm for a potential life that lay ahead. Now what I see is lack of hope and that kills people more than any other thing because it kills from the inside out. Without hope there is nothing. Even the darkest story has to have a thread of hope running through it. I’m starting to lose hope about all of this.

It is hard to remain buoyant in all of this. It is hard to feel that we are making a difference and are not part of the problem. I guess we are all part of the problem. It is hard to know where to vent all this stuff and what could be better than being buried under a pile of puppies. There are 9 puppies at the warehouse from different litters who were found by the side of the road without a mum. They are bouncy, very very cute and need lots of cuddles. Being buried under a pile of puppies should be prescribed, I reckon it would cure loads of conditions. The trick now is to not actually take most of them and stick them in the now empty truck and bring them back home…

What happens in any group of people is that there is a general forming of the group where people show their nice sides, find commonalities and agree that they are going to pull together as a group. When I used to work in youth work we used to call it ‘forming, storming, norming.’ (We also used to say that if, by the end of the first day, you don’t know who the wanker is then it’s probably you but that’s a whole different matter). The next bit is storming when people start to get a bit pissed off with one another, they get tired and are no longer able to hang on to the spiky not so nice bits of themselves and the spiky not so nice bits of themselves start to poke their heads out of the cave. Then it is norming when everything settles down again and the cycle starts all over again.

As I write this we are currently sat at the Hungarian/Serbian border and it is safe to say that the storming bit is the phase that we are going through. Coming up to the border we lay bets on how long it would take us to get through the border. I, optimistically, said 1 hour and 47 minutes. Pffffff what a fool. Chas, the organiser of the whole thing, then revealed that the record for the longest delay was actually 3 days. As I write this it is starting to feel like we might actually top that record. Bureaucracy, that we all know and love, is rearing its ugly head. Apparently, on the last convoy in October, there was a blip on one of the road tolls with one of the trucks in Hungary and, apparently, this is not an easy thing to sort out.

To say it is chilly is a massive understatement. I think it’s slightly warmer than yesterday’s -16 but not much. It’s character building anyway. Different aspects of people’s reactions to delay are starting to emerge, some of them funny and some of them not quite so funny. I’m not sure that I have ever had a straightforward journey in my whole life so I do feel like I have an unfair advantage in the managing delay department. But, to everyone’s credit, we are in a situation where ten strangers are thrown together in an unusual, requiring slightly above average managing skills, situation so it could be a great deal worse. Humour, as ever, wins the day.

Which brings me back to Mind The Gap. I am starting to realise, and truly believe, that all of the ills of mankind can be put down to the gap between expectation and reality. I expected the journey to have some sticky bits and the reality is that it does. I expected it to be cold but the reality is that it is f*****g cold. The journey I can cope with and the cold I really struggle with. The difference between expectation and reality.

Take a very simple situation like a trip to the shops. You expect to drive to the shops, park the car, do what you need to do and come home again. If the reality is that there is nowhere to park, just that slight alteration in the gap between expectation and reality can be a day changer. If we relay this theory to the refugees, which is the whole point of this trip, then the whole gap between expectation and reality becomes a cruel gulf.

How people are managing to survive, and I suspect that some are not, in tents in this cold is beyond me. Why anyone on this planet expects it to be alright to expect people to survive in tents in this cold is beyond me. My expectation of our governments was that they showed some humanity to anyone in need if it is within their power to do so. The reality is that our governments have shown themselves to be of a cruelty that I had hoped never to see. It should be no surprise. I have an image of World War 1 in the trenches where a whistle was blown and young lads with surnames, say A to G, were sent ‘over the top’ to an almost certain death. It is an image that has stuck with me that shows the stark reality that we are just pawns in someone’s game somewhere. Our governments have never shown compassion. I don’t know why. I absolutely cannot understand it. I can understand the fear of an individual who shows prejudice towards that which they are ignorant and fearful about. I don’t agree with it but I can understand it. I cannot understand why whole organisations are capable of outright cruelty towards people. I just don’t get it.

Something like this convoy is an antidote to that which we are being fed and led to believe is the way to behave towards our fellow humans. It is only ever alright to show compassion and humanity towards others at a time of need, regardless of the reasons that lead to that need being a need. It could be argued that a convoy like this is not necessary in the grand scheme of things but there is a whole chain of events that lead to a convoy being possible and necessary. Every single person who has contributed towards the aid, to shops donating food, to the person knitting a blanket, to another person donating a fiver, is actually saying that they give a shit and do not adhere and agree to the way that refugees are being treated. Not In Our Name you don’t. A whole line of people who talk to other people, who inspire others to use their courage to act against what is rapidly becoming the norm. If the reality is becoming that people are numbed to the cruelty and inhospitality being shown to others then we need to change the reality. This convoy is a small, but important like all small things, drop in the ocean towards that happening. Rather than change our expectations to meet the reality of the changes going on in this world, we actually need to change the reality.

Meanwhile, we shall sit and wait at this border waiting for our reality to become slight more mobile and animated…

I am writing this from somewhere in Germany where it is very cold. We have trucked our way through France, Belgium and now Germany. We have lost one another a few times, radios have failed us a few more times than that. Only one minor incident with one truck reversing into the prized massive truck of a big Polish bloke who turned out to be extraordinarily good natured. Ten very different personalities trucking their way along but with one common cause between us.

I had a very proud mummy moment yesterday. I have many proud mummy moments because I’ve been blessed with a real dude of a boy who gives a shit about the world. Chris, my boy, has set up a charity (see picture above) to deal with festival waste. He gathers tents, sleeping bags, clothes and all manner of other things and instead of it all going to landfill, which is what usually happens to it, he gets it to people who need it. It’s hard work. It’s massively unglamorous work and he needs a lot of help to do it.

I am travelling in a convoy of 5 trucks with various aid on board to go to the camps in Greece where desperation abounds.Amongst that aid is also some 200 plus sleeping bags that just happen to be the very same ones that my son gathered at the V Festival in Chelmsford last year. He gathered them and, by a combination of fate and strange circumstances, I’m delivering the very same sleeping bags to where they need to go. A proper personal delivery service. How cool is that?!

Which brings me to the parachute packer story. Apparently, so my co-driver Suleman tells me, there was a WWII parachutist who was being awarded a medal for his acts of bravery. When receiving the medal, he reeled off a long list of names of people to thank. The following day, he was contacted by th parachute packer to say that he had not been thanked. A parachutist is seriously stuffed without the dedicated, precise work of a parachute packer.

Which also brings me to here and now. Yes I’ve just spent the night (and about to spend another night) freezing my nads off ‘sleeping’ in the back of a truck. Yes, I’m driving a few thousand miles to deliver aid to where it needs to go, but I’m not the hero here. The hero is my son who traipsed round a post apocalyptic festival field gathering sleeping bags and is also looking after my dear Tom dog. The heroes are the people who drive up and down the country sorting and delivering aid. The heroes are the people who, in all good faith, donate money to make this kind of stuff happen. There are people making phone calls, answering emails and I could go on and on.

I’m just driving a truck. There are so many people who give a shit in order to make this happen. There are people who quietly get on with stuff and don’t get any recognition for what they do. I could name names but I’m not sure how much those people appreciate being applauded in public. So to all you people out there, all you parachute packers, a deep heartfelt thanks. All of you are what is stopping us from going under at a time when a tsunami of ill feeling seems to be washing over the world. If you want to be not just a parachute packer but a van packer then do get in touch with Chris. If you have a van to lend Chris for the summer to actually pack things into then that would be even more heroic. You can have fun packing away tents, sleeping bags etc after festivals and it is way more fun than it sounds. You get to meet lots of give a shit people who are the best kind of people.

There are so many parachute packers and, like the parachutist, we’d be royally stuffed without you.

Today is turnaround day for many people all over the world. For many more it is the same old same old unseen injustice but today there are people stepping up and using their voice.

It is the first day of Trump being president of America and there are so many wrongs with that, I think that most sane thinking people will agree with that. I guess his wrongness is way more blatant than previous people and it makes it a great deal easier to rally against than the subtle wrongs that have gone before. What will come of it we don’t know but there are people rising up to say their piece and that can only be a good thing as long as it is done in way that is intelligent and fruitful.

There is much talk of free speech. I know that whenever people have cornered me about refugee speak and I have said that their views are not acceptable then the age old ‘But everyone is entitled to free speech’ sentence is hauled out of the unimaginative box. Of course everyone is entitled to free speech but that is not the same as hate speech. One is legal and the other is not. To wish death and ill upon another fellow human based upon their place in this world is hate speech. It is vile, disgusting and, quite frankly, terrifying. To have an exchange of differing views is useful, this is free speech. I know that I tend to move in circles of like minded people out of choice and it is interesting and a wake up call to be called into a discussion that shows different views. Not an argument, a discussion. An argument is about who is right. A discussion is about what is right. There is a fundamental difference. It is never right to wish bad stuff on a person, or a group of people based upon religion, colour, place of birth etc. It’s just ignorant. There may be reasons and those reasons are often personal i.e you were mugged by someone. In which case it was one arse of a person doing something wrong to you, they do not represent a nation or a religion or a group of people.

I have no idea what will happen from today, as do most of us. Trump is one man probably having his puppet strings pulled by a whole load of other crazy people. Putin is one man. Assad is one man. None of them can operate alone, they require a whole team of people and whole nations to be behind them. By going on a march and using our voices we are openly declaring that we are not part of the team driving all these insane actions, that we are prepared and ready to actively oppose. By keeping quiet you become part of the team driving the Trump et al chariot. As Desmond Tutu said, ‘If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.’

Another quote recently shown by my dear friend Hilary and written by Naomi Shulman says: ‘Nice people made the best Nazis. My mom grew up next to them. They got along, refused to make waves, looked the other way when things got ugly and focused on happier things than ‘politics.’ They were lovely people who turned their heads as their neighbours were dragged away. You know who weren’t nice people? Resisters.’ So a whole bunch of not nice people are marching across the world today and having their voices heard.

I am setting off today to meet with my fellow truckers and am driving a truck to Greece. I did this in the summer and was the only woman truck driver that we came across in Europe so I gave myself the title of Mother Trucker, which makes me sound slightly more badass than I actually am, which pleases me. There is another woman on the journey this time and that pleases me too. We are driving a few trucks full of aid to the 65,000 plus people still stuck in Greece. I first went to Calais in August 2015. I first went to Greece to volunteer with refugees in November 2015. The narrative has changed considerably during that time. I was called a volunteer in 2015 and now I am introduced to people as an activist. I’m doing exactly the same thing but it is now seen as an act of rebellion rather than an act of charity. That is the narrative that is happening around our ears. The frog slowly getting boiled to death in his own water without even realising.

So, apparently, I’m one of those not nice people. Thank heavens for that and I have so much and so many people to thank for that. A long long line of ancestors who were also not ‘nice’ people, I have some well worn footsteps to walk in. I thought I would try and write a bit of a diary of mother trucking across Europe over the next couple of weeks or so as internet and everything will allow. So, dear fellow not nice people, keep marching and shouting and writing and drawing and singing and doing whatever and I’ll keep trucking…

Earlier this week I had the pleasure and honour of hosting these two fine people for just one night.

Red and Silva (the colours of Christmas as it so happens) walked from Big Ben in London to Lincoln Cathedral, over not nearly enough days for that distance, to raise money for a young mother of 3, Natalie, who has had a serious car accident leaving her bed bound. They want to buy her a fancy pants wheelchair that will enhance her life that has been so tragically altered.

It was Red’s idea. He has never met Natalie, he just read about her plight. Silva has never met Red. He just heard what Red was doing and chose to join in. I’ve never met Silva. I know Red through campaigning for the children in Calais online – one of the many people who spend hours each day, unseen, unheard and taking no credit at all for all the work that they do. These are two people who simply decided to get up off their arses and do something for someone they have never met.

Red and Silva embody, what should be, the spirit of Christmas. Doing something just for the sheer love of a fellow human being. Red and Silva give a shit and this is why it was such an utter pleasure and an honour to play a small part in their journey. It was meant to be 140 miles but it would have been way more than that. I picked them up late at night in the thick fog in the middle of nowhere in a place that google maps had taken them to, which was off course but we all know that about google maps.

They were being driven by a determination which transcends any personal gain, any wish for recognition or glory. I saw the state of Red’s feet and there was nothing glorious about them I can assure you. They were being driven by the very human wish to better the life of another unknown human sharing the same planet. I am not one given over to mush but they were powered by love of the very purest kind. Red and Silva represent all that is right with the human race.

I have seen a lot of this over the past year. Many, many people who are driven to be able to do things for people, give to people at a time when others are in trouble and they are able to do something about it. I have seen love and altruism on an epic scale that has restored my faith in the human race. I never knew that there were so many people quietly battling away for a better world with a stoic determination that is totally unmovable. I have also seen hatred and ignorance that cuts to the very core, that is culling kindness at the same rate that we are culling our planet. They might even be the same people. I have seen good people sit by and do nothing. I have seen people become divided by fear and statistics and hatred. What I would say, though, is that there are many more good people than there are those wishing ill upon others. When I see hatred spewing out of our many forms of media I hum a little tune to myself and I would invite you to do the same. It goes like this and is hummed to the tune of ‘She’ll be coming round the mountain when she comes…’

‘There are many many more of us than you. There are many many more of us than you. There are many many more of us. Many many more of us. Many many more of us than you.’

There is great strength in numbers as the saying goes. So, it would be good to up the numbers of people who give a shit. Increase the numbers of Reds and Silvas on this planet.

Red and Silva have now arrived at their destination and I hope that they have been able to raise enough money to buy a wheelchair for Natalie. Well done lads, you are amazing you really are. What Red and Silva have done is way way more than walk from Big Ben to London. They have stepped up to the plate and shown the power of love and I am in awe of them.

I was listening to a radio programme the other day that was talking about some people in Macedonia who earn money by making up fake news. It felt a bit shocking but it shouldn’t really be shocking because that is what we get fed all the time. I guess what was shocking was that these are actual individuals potentially changing the course of events regardless of the consequences. ‘We’ve got some good stories lined up for the French election,’ was how the programme ended in an ominous and threatening cliffhanger.

But why should that be shocking? Because it is blatant untruth not wrapped up in shiny paper? I’m not sure but it certainly doesn’t sit well. We are being fed lies all the time and how are we to know what is the ‘real’ story and what is not? We can’t all go out to various parts of the world to find out the truth about what is actually happening but we can find out from someone who is out there or who does know. Even then, we would only be getting one person’s reality amongst the zillions of stories that unfold around us.

We are fed stories all of the time and whose stories are they anyway? We are influenced by the stories around us, we are made up of stories, they are the very bedrock of humanity and they are also manipulated to make us believe whatever is convenient for us to believe at the time. As Terry Pratchett (I really miss him) once said, “People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it’s the other way around…”

What happens when people write your story for you? What happens is that people start spouting complete rubbish, believing it to have some basis in reality, and there is a very real impact upon a person’s life. For example, the likes of the Daily Fail and The Sun say things like ‘We are being overrun by foreigners and you will never get to see (usually a foreign) doctor ever again.” Panic sets in, fear fuelled by ignorance and then a Polish family has their shop burnt down. Person writes story for money = person’s story being rewritten as a consequence. Every time you, or anyone, squishes a person into a triangular shaped hole of prejudice, you are writing their story for them.

There is the narrative of the good immigrant/bad immigrant that hangs heavily in the air. Yes you can be here but you have to be a super human being and not commit any human error at all, ever, not once. Even a speeding offence can be enough to prevent a person from applying for citizenship. You can jog along through life being super good, super successful but please don’t outshine everyone else, very very polite and then maybe maybe we might give you a polite applause. The judgement weighs heavily on what constitutes good immigrant/bad immigrant and it takes very little for a person to have their story rewritten for them.

Last night I watched a programme about 5 year olds and they had a selection of 5 year olds from different backgrounds to try and cover the range of people that might ordinarily be represented. No Chinese children. In Eastenders there are no Chinese people. You hardly ever see Chinese people represented in stories or the media and yet there is a huge population of Chinese people in this country. They are the group of people in this country most likely to be on the receiving end of a racist attack and yet we hear nothing. Why? I think it is because the story (stereotype) that is written on behalf of the Chinese population is that they are quiet, uncomplaining and hard working so we never hear about them. What if a Chinese girl wanted to dye her hair purple and join a rock band, sleeping all day and partying all night? Gasp, Chinese girls don’t do that, we haven’t written that into their story.

By neatly putting people into categories – Chinese people are good at maths and work hard, certain castes or classes of people can never aspire to a level of education, Muslims are terrorists, only children are spoilt, the Irish are drinkers – their stories are being written for them before they are even  born. A Muslim will have to prove that they are not a nutter rather than it just being presumed, a Chinese girl will have to battle for a place at drama school rather than doing maths, the behaviour of an only child will be interpreted as spoilt before proving themselves innocent and so it goes on and on and on and on. The consequences of writing someone’s story for them is huge, it results in death and misery on a very very big scale.

Even on a small scale it can alter the path that people might take or feel able to take. The careers advice at my school was that, as girls, we might get a job as a secretary but probably not even that. We just survived the experience, it was hugely zen and in the power of now. ‘Have you done your homework?’ ‘I’ve just been to the loo and survived miss…,’ our thoughts didn’t extend far into the future. At another school, just a few miles down the road, children were being told that they could aspire to great and grand things in life. It was just the luck of the draw but people were having their stories written for them except for those determined few who had the energy left to take their fate into their own hands.

I was speaking with a Kurdish friend who asked me how many people there are in London – around 16 million I think was my reply. He said that there are around 7 million people in Kurdistan. I said that I thought that there were around 40 million Kurdish people and we sat in the silence of our mismatched information. What if the Kurdish people are being told that there are not many of them to make them believe that they could not be a force to be reckoned with and we are being told that there are millions and millions of them to make us believe that they are a force to be reckoned with? How do we actually know how many people there are in London? It’s easy in a village to go round counting people but in the whole country, how do we actually know that there are too many people as we are being told? So there are registers and lists and data and all that stuff but who is collecting it? The very people who are feeding us the stories that fuel the fear and ignorance that is writing the stories of others.

The truth is that we can never actually know. The more I know about various goings on, the less I know to the point that I now feel like I know pretty much nothing. What I do know is that we have to write our own stories. To place judgement upon another person is to write their story for them and none of us have the right to do that to another person. Our stories are sacred, our stories are the very essence of who we are, our stories are to be held sacred rather than to be rewritten and meddled with as if they were some sort of game. Write your own story and stand very proud within your own story’s skin and leave everyone else’s stories alone.

So the Jungle is finished. It was a day that was hoped for by so many, that place should never have existed in the first place, but it also leaves sadness.

So many people that I have spoken to say that they miss the Jungle in Calais. They reach a place of safety, reach a goal, the supposed dream and then miss that shit hole of a place. Why? Well, because it was so much more than just a shit hole. It was so much more than a few shacks and tents. I have never really been a great advocate of the idea that you have to have lived it to understand. For example, I don’t have to be black to know that racism is wrong but, in the case of Calais, it is true. It is difficult to explain why you have to have been there to understand but I will try.

The Jungle was not just a place for people to sleep but a place for people to stand. People stood up for what they believed in, people moved heaven and earth to make things happen against all the odds. People remained resilient and kind in the face of the worst treatment. People stood up against their worst fears, their worst nightmares and came out the other end. People were able to be in a way that normal life does not usually encourage and that goes from one spectrum of human behaviour to the other. There was brutality, violence, fear, joy, laughter, music, more laughter, hospitality, hard work, theft, exploitation, beauty, resilience and so much more. Everything was extreme, extremely kind, extremely brutal, extremely extreme and it is not often that you get to experience life in the extreme. I discovered that I am good in a crisis. In ‘normal’ life being good in a crisis doesn’t really get you anywhere, unless you’re a firefighter or something, and it is not often that you get to flap your feathers. In the jungle there were many people like that who got to show their beautiful feathers in a way that normal life would not allow them and that goes for everyone.

The Jungle was a place that rose up out of the sand dunes, out of the chemical waste, fuelled by the ingenuity of the human spirit. I remember walking along the path one day and a broken tent was lying by the path. By the time we made our way back again, someone had turned the broken tent poles into a set of steps up a muddy bank complete with handrails. The Jungle became a city and, like any city, it had shops, nightclubs, cafes, schools, community centres, church, mosque, library, theatre and you name it, whatever the human spirit most needs, it was there. Like any city there were people that exploited others, there were victims of violence, there were undercurrents of every kind. The difference with the Jungle was that it was stripped of the veneer of pretence that is layered so thickly over most cities. The veneer that allows us to believe that everything is under control. The veneer fuelled by car MOTs and weekly shops and latest fashions and food in abundance and music piped through shops telling us that everything is just fine. The jungle was the same as any other city but it didn’t, or couldn’t, pretend to be anything that it wasn’t. It was raw and real.

People miss it because it was so real, urgent, and it had a purpose even if that purpose was survival. Isn’t that the general purpose that we all have except it’s dressed up a bit fancier than that? People miss the community spirit, the pulling together, being able to help one another. I miss the fact that there were so many people there spending time trying to be good rather than spending time trying to look good. I saw real beauty in that place. People miss it because it was like no other place that any of us are likely to experience, the good and the bad. Most of all people miss the people. Most of us there would, in other circumstances, never have got to meet one another, people from around 20 different countries would never have crossed paths and friendships were thrown together of the most improbably combinations. Over the last year I have lost old friends and made new friends. That’s life I suppose.

I bow my head in awe at the people I have met. Journeys made over and over, journeys across the world, escaping war, escaping all sorts, stories and stories that will swim round my head forever. Volunteers who came together and achieved what seemed the impossible. The one constant thread running through that place was tenacity. Tenacity is so often seen as a virtue but it came to be seen as a threat. The Jungle was a mirror held up to the world and the world did not like what it saw. It was a reminder of the inhumanity that lies so embedded within the system that proclaims to greatly to be there to take care of us all. It was a mirror that the world was not ready to look into. Just yet anyway but there is always hope…

The last post that I wrote was about people being outraged at the thought of women possibly going and having sex with anyone that wasn’t from these green and pleasant lands. There had been outrage at the thought of a couple, a British volunteer and a Syrian guest, living happily ever after or happy even just for a little bit. There was no outrage at children being raped but apparently sex and happiness for us English roses is not on. I will come back to this…

This last week has seen the dismantling of the Calais camp and the press have descended upon this with hand rubbing glee. It is important that events are portrayed in the media, this cannot be denied, but you’d like to hope that a certain level of decency and responsibility comes with that but we have all come to shrug our shoulders and say ‘Ah well, that’s the press for you’ when they incite hatred and write complete bollocks. Time for a big up for the Mirror, Guardian and Times who have been supportive and tried to tell the truth as we know it. May The Sun burn in hell…

The power of the press, and the media in general, can also come into its own as a force for good as this week has shown. As various authorities ploughed forth with taking apart the camp and scattering 10,000 people to the winds and four corners of France or the world, children were left. Neither the French nor the UK authorities were doing what needed to be done to ensure the safety and well being of these children, and this meant even the very basics like food and water. Come into force, the mighty people that know how to do videos and stuff and a whole heap of people who give a shit and shouting from the rooftops for something to be done about this.

I put up a post on facebook asking if people could join the shouting by tweeting and emailing and phoning and doing whatever they could, or wanted to do, to let the powers that be know that we do not find it acceptable to leave 1500 unaccompanied children to their fate without protection and safety. It went nuts. My intention was to share with friends and family, the vast majority of whom I am pretty sure do not find children offensive, and ask for their support in this. The post was shared almost 8000 times and nutters started flooding in from all over the place.

Before the sun had set on the first day (let’s try and turn this vitriol into poetry), comments were coming in such as ‘Stop bringing them over here ffs (which means for fuck’s sake apparently)’ ‘They have nothing that we want (or something to that effect)’ We’re all going to end up wearing hijabs’ and so on and so forth. It felt like I was being cornered by a pack of snarling dogs. To be fair, the sane comments far outweighed the insane ones but still. The post was asking for support to keep children safe. Children that are prey to all kinds of stuff – the slave trade, prostitution, sold for sex, sold for their organs – and the trade is thriving as children are on their own and wandering about Europe unprotected. I was not advocating anything other than trying to ensure the safety of children.

Why, then, should it incite such hatred? Why are people so frightened of a few children? Taking away any of the narrative around age and which country is responsible and the standard stuff, what we really have is some children who need protecting. When a story was published that children were being raped in the camp there was nothing said. When a story emerged that children needed protection and a place of safety, possibly even in the UK, there was an uprising. What is that all about?

So I come back to the sex thing. I think it is all about sex. For some reason men get upset about women having sex with someone who is not from here (This is probably true of many countries). It seems to be alright the other way round i.e. if a man is with a woman from another country – ‘Cor he’s done alright’ ‘He must be rich’ – and people don’t seem to get quite so upset about unattractive women being taken ‘off the market.’ An attractive white female, however, causes venom to spill forth, the likes of which I hoped never to hear and read (Sarah and Hamoude take comfort in this, that maybe the reason that your lives have been blighted with hatred is because you are both too beautiful!) Likewise with children. It appears to elicit a response that goes well beyond anything that is reasonable. Some people try to dress up their responses into nhs concern or schools or housing or there won’t be enough ketchup left over and so on. They are children. You just budge over and make room for children. That’s it. So I started to think about this coming from a place of primal fear, the survival of the species and all that.

Is it survival of the species that is a driving force behind all this hatred? I will take lions as an example because I like lions. Women lions generally stay their whole lives in the same pride that they are born into. The women lions do most of the hunting and work together for the whole pride to be able to eat. Men lions are driven out of their pride when they are teenagers (relatively speaking) and then they wander about until they are strong enough to take over another pride by sending the resident male packing. They have a few short years to make babies before they, in turn, are driven out. When a man lion takes over a pride he kills all cubs under the age of two. This makes sure that there are no cubs that are not his and that the woman lion is now ready to have some more babies, his babies. Women lions, who are already pregnant when the new man lion come along, have been found to ‘disguise’ their pregnancy and fool the man lion into thinking that the new babies will be his. That also sounds a bit familiar.

Survival of the species is a driving force and, therefore, individuals of any species end up behaving in a way to ensure that survival happens. As humans, though, we should have the mental capacity to contemplate how our actions, as a species, affect the whole and all of the possible consequences. The species, in and of itself, is not motivated to do anything in particular. It is the individuals that have motivations and what motivates that individual is that they have babies, their babies. The rest of the species does not come into consideration, at this point, as members of their own species (still trying to stick to lions here) are eliminated rather than preserved if they lie in the path of that individual’s ongoing reproductive success.

So I started to think of all these children as maybe representing the cubs of other lions and could this be a reason, a primal fear one, for people’s otherwise incomprehensible reactions to children needing a place of safety. I ran this idea past a very dear and wise friend who is just 18 years old. ‘Yes but we’re not lions,’ was her reply.  Spot on. We, as a species, have homes for old people, we stop and pick someone up if they’ve fallen over, we even have an emergency service to help people in trouble. We do not naturally want to eliminate those that are of no use to us or stand in the way of a good shag. Naturally, we are a loving and caring species. That is how we start off and then it changes as life experiences happen and narratives reach our ears and fear kicks in. But the very primal instinct of which baby belongs to who continues to cause more than a few ripples. Women have ovaries and men don’t. I don’t know why, but that’s just the way it is. The only sure fire way to ensure that a baby is produced by one particular male is to lock that woman in a room and allow access to no other males. This does happen in some parts of the world and most people would find this abhorrent.

So, although most people would not advocate the practice (that continues to happen in this world) of burying women up to their necks and throwing stones at them until they die, when a person says ‘They deserve to be raped,’ it is coming from the same mentality. Women who volunteer with refugees have had this thrown at them time and time again, death threats and so it goes on. It is the very same mentality that drives oppressive and lethal practices across the world. It is the same mentality that finds the idea of a few children needing a place of safety terrifying. Absolutely not alright.

I put up a photo of a fire that my friend had in her garden yesterday. Big fire, big garden. Why that photo? Because although I feel genuine pity for those who are shackled by the fear of the ‘other,’ my heart actually goes out to those who lives are crippled by the idea of a divisive narrative, a teeny bit of me does actually hope that there is a special place in the burning fires of hell for those that wish ill on the lives of our children and on our fellow humans, from whichever loins they were spurned.