Today was not a typical Saturday in Manchester. Around 10,000 folk joined a series of anti-war marches that converged in the city centre. Not a bad number considering that the weather was decidedly Mancunion and absolutely tipped it down all day.
It’s amazing how in a crowd that size, we still managed to bump into countless people we knew.
This included a good handful of Greenbelters and in a fine example of multitasking I may bizarrely also have signed up a potential new venue manager…
Unfortunately the marching on hard tarmac has also flared up my dodgy foot injury, which was incurred the first year Greenbelt was at Cheltenham. It gets aggravated each August by a week and a half of walking up and down the racecourse site, but I try not to complain – they shoot lame horses don’t they?
pip here ....... human and beautiful ....important to know that because we/ I can then relate and work with not only the lovely but the unlovely.
Had this in mind when I met someone for lunch yesterday. I planned what I wanted to talk with her about,strategic you know. I wanted to tell her about Santos ( see www.romfordymca.org ) and go to 'pearls' and you will see a pic of him and a poem. He was dumped here by his mother as a baby and she went back to Brazil. Childrens Homes and prison led him to the ymca and he got caught up in a love community .........I told my lunch date about him .....and the story is fantastic .....my late night two fingers cannot cope ...........
I was nominated to sit next to the Queen yesterday when she came to romford ........she asked and probed. She asked why did he go to prison and I don't know. Never asked. I work with him on his future not his past. ......i will post some more about this i the future ......she was nice and not so posh as the puppets make out.
Tomorrow I go to a Level 5 week-end. ........this group have been meeting up for 23 years,2 or 3 times a year and just leveling with each other. Ask me if you don't know the concept.
See you Sunday. In the meantime I can only recommend the new MASSIVE ATTACK album and their website which I left running all day today with music flowin ...... www.massiveattack.com
pip@pipwilson.com
bhp
Gently breaking into my challenge for Lent - under the auspices of Church Action on Poverty I'm living off the equivalent of the Minimum Wage for the next six weeks. For me that works out at quite a liveable eighty quid; that's because I pay no rent - if I did, the story would be very different. Probably reveal that at present I'm living beyond my means.
That's part of the challenge - just to make those sorts of observations and face the questions they raise. Already I've had conversations about the rights and wrongs of taking on such a project - and about how some folk would love to have eighty quid to play with at the start of each week. I think I'll probably survive ok; have to stop impulse buying, bypass book and record shops, keep off Amazon.com, etc. The biggest challenge for me will be the week I spend on holiday - in North Wales (renting my friends' cottage is fairly cheap, but food from Dolwddellan Spar ain't), and then roving around Essex and London.
I've cheated a bit - ie, already booked accommodation down south - but even so I'm having, from day one of Lent, to save up for the holiday week. Otherwise my disposable will be disposed of very rapidly in the smoke. And it'll be interesting to see if I have to borrow (from the future, as it where) to make sure I get through. Debt's a massive effect of low income; I know that myself from times not too far past.
It's a false economy, I've no illusions about that - today I'm still living off a fridgefull of food bought on higher income, running a car two-thirds full of petrol, etc - but it's definitely thought-provoking. And a sign of solidarity with people on lower incomes who face a struggle to make ends meet all year round. I've been glad to share it on Radio Merseyside twice this week; wonder what the listeners think who have to budget this way all the time.