Day 48 of the End to End in 2019 took me to Wigan Pier via Scotsman’s Flash. The flashes, strung out alongside the Leeds and Liverpool Canal are wild life havens these days and there were plenty of waterfowl, insects and wild flowers. The Goat Willow was letting off fluff everywhere making quite deep piles beside the path, a phenomenon that has been repeated this year recently on my walks in Derbyshire.
Another thing that resonates with last year is child poverty. We seem to be living in Orwellian Days where doublespeak breaks out in every briefing, where two legs are good but headless is better, where the lock down rules apply to everyone except to some people, where leaders are hard to distinguish and leadership is an absent joke.
But alongside all of this distracting nonsense children continue to live in increasing poverty that none of them have chosen. Just so you know there are some serious moment on LEJOG, I wrote this reflection on Psalm 137 a year ago today:
From Psalm 137
By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion.
There on the poplars we hung our harps,
for there our captors asked us for songs,
our tormentors demanded songs of joy;
they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”The exiles are expected to sing happy songs in the place of their captivity. They remember the songs but don’t have the heart for them.
We do not always feel like singing happy songs.
As the years go by the divisions in our society seem to be as deep as ever:
Children grow up in poverty,
More families rely on food banks.
I cannot sing happy songs about these things.
My mood today is much the same. I did used to sing a lot on LEJOG, making up stuff as I went along. I’m certainly singing a lot less at the moment.
Wigan will be as closed to day as most other parts of the NW of England. The Orwell, the pub landmark by the canal, will be closed, as will many of the shops and all the pubs, cafes and restaurants. As people walk by on the tow path, it may be easy to overlook the fact that the community is struggling with some of the worst poverty rates in the area, and certainly with poverty that we should all be ashamed of, and carry on to the next landmark. But today my lament is for Wigan and for the Orwellian fact that we are being encouraged to lie and cheat our way out of this pandemic as if that was our new moral compass, bright and shiny and ready for the new direction. I’m not prepared to go that way: poverty will never be good, abject poverty will never be better.
From The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell. “A human being is primarily a bag for putting food into; the other functions and faculties may be more godlike, but in point of time they come afterwards”.
(I’ll be honest, I didn’t remember this, I looked it up)
I lament with all those who are on God’s side.
I remember the starving of the poor,
the callousness of food vouchers for poor families,
the shame of longer and longer food bank lines,
the humiliation of not being able to feed your own children.
I will not sing a happy song: grant justice God of all!
When all are fed justly, may we also all sing again.
JAL: 23.05.2020 in Longdendale