"In the rush to recognise Trump’s new victim status, nobody seemed to be thinking about his own invocations of brutality. Before he was banned from Twitter, he had been warned for 'glorifying violence'. He said Mexicans trying to cross the border illegally should be shot in the leg. At the time of the Black Lives Matter protests relating to the murder of George Floyd, he tweeted: 'when the looting starts, the shooting starts'." Andrew O'Hagan went to the Republican National Convention.
"It isn’t that all feminism’s forebears have been forgotten. But those who are remembered tend to be celebrated for their most singular and charismatic deeds. Suffragettes pouring acid on golf courses and women’s libbers flour-bombing the 1970 Miss World contest have both recently featured in films. I love these stories. But they are not instruction manuals." Susanna Rustin searches London for memorials to early feminists.
Ray Casey dreams of reopening the coastal railway line from Middlesbrough to Scarborough.
"A former miner, he recounted being trapped by a rockfall and waiting for hours to be rescued without being able to move a millimetre. There must be mental powers of concentration and stamina bound up with this experience which were probably transferable to the experience of playing endless frames of snooker." Conrad Brunstrom pays tribute to Ray Reardon.
Patricia Herlihy on the flowers to be found in her garden in July: "A few might seem to be weeds to some, but I find them to be useful as pollinator foods and very pretty as well."
In 1978 I went on a school trip to Staithes. We were issued with a booklet about the town which included a sentence beginning: 'Until the coming of the railway (closing down in 1958)...'
ReplyDeleteYes, the words "dreams of" seemed the most appropriate here.
ReplyDelete