Let's face the music and dance

Will someone explain to me how we’ve ended up in this mess?  Ten years ago, I returned from a two year stay in Bangkok to the LA, when it was still the UK.  Much as I had loved my time in Thailand I couldn’t wait to get home; I wanted to kiss the tarmac on landing.  My wonderful country!  My home!  A place I understood, where I knew what to do if there was a problem, who to see, our fabulous NHS and welfare system that aimed at supporting people out of trouble, rather than punishing them for getting into it.

How things have changed and how the poison that has been relentlessly dripped from the right wing press has contributed to the development and maintenance of this climate of anger, fear and intolerance under which we now live.  It has cynically tapped into and used the genuine fears and frustrations of the many ruined industrial communities of people who, for decades, have been compelled to exist in a fractured society of poverty, powerlessness, hopelessness and anger.

I don’t recognise my home any more.  I am sick of listening to the Goves and Johnsons talking about, ‘serving my country’.  I’m not sure what they mean by their country.  Is it some great bank in the sky?  Some amorphous thing that’s only accessible to the rich and privileged?  For me, it’s very simple: I LIVE HERE! It’s my home; where I should feel safe and secure; where I belong.  I don’t feel as if I belong anymore and I am terrified for my/ our futures.

Right wing fascists, (and let’s call them what they are – populist sounds rather nice doesn’t it?  Popular, likeable, friendly even), have become our mainstream politicians.  They’re no longer nutters and eccentrics on the fringes, they’re in power!   God help us.  The likes of Johnson, his chum Cummings, along with the chameleon Gove and the evolutionary throw-back Reesium Moggimus (not to mention his poisonous sister Euthanasia of the Brexshit Party), have achieved what I have never believed possible. My father will be turning in his grave. ‘Gillian,’ he used to say, ‘the British people don’t like extremists.’  Well, apparently we do now.

I will be taking up my role as Queen for the Day again shortly.  At the moment my prison is full of offenders waiting for trial. (I hear from my Minister for Brexshit that Gove is up before the judge next, but he’s so slippery, he might have turned Queen’s evidence for a lighter sentence.)  I’ll keep you posted.  Meanwhile, as an antidote to our current dire situation, I like to listen to Nat King Cole, singing, ‘Let’s Play the Music and Dance' and watch the fabulous Rogers and Astaire do it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjJHnKw7YNA

there may be trouble ahead,

but while there’s moonlight and music and love and romance,
let's face the music and dance.

before the fiddlers have fled,
before they ask us to pay the bill,
and while we still have the chance,
let's face the music and dance.

soon, we'll be without the moon,
humming a different toon,
and then, there may be tear drops to shed.
so while there’s moonlight and music and love and romance,

let's face the music and dance.