This short piece was written in response to an article from an exhibition at Newton House, Dinefwr in South Wales. The item was a stove pipe hat. Members of People Speak Up were invited to create works. I was fortunate to be chosen to read my piece at an event at Newton House on December 3rd.
Although my blog features less of my creative writing these days, I thought I’d share this…
Brexit. Banker’s bonuses. Inflation. A sincere failure to stop businesses putting profits over human lives. Partygate. Sleazegate. A crippled health service. Waiting times. Cost of living crisis. Trickle down economics. A weakening pound.
Food banks in every town. A donation nation.
Hiding in fridges. Austerity. Cuts. HS2. A trip to Barnard Castle. Test and Trace. Useless PPE. Fracking. The list goes on. A daily barrage of the have-nots having everything taken from them. Every day, the rich get richer.
When the grain failed, and the tolls deepened the hole, we rose like fierce Victorian drag queens…”And they blessed Rebekah, and said unto her, Thou art our sister, be thou the mother of thousands of millions, and let thy seed possess the gate of those which hate them.”
And the daughters of Rebecca broke the gates. We did not lie down. We didn’t let them take another piece of our sanity or take the stale bread from our children’s mouths. We stood.
But now nothing even riles us. At best, our words silently pale into an infinite social media echo chamber filled with Russian bots and the few disenfranchised souls that are taken in by anti-immigrant spin.
It is time to wear the stove pipe hat again.
It’s time to make a stand. Take action. Cast off the shackles of indifference. Look away from the Huxleyan distractions that dumb our senses and keep us placidly apathetic.
Just one more TikTok then we’ll rise. Let’s craft a witty tweet to up the ante. Maybe we’ll make a Pinterest board to find the right style to match the aesthetic of the uprising. What time should we set the Facebook event for that’ll bring down the system?
Maybe we’ve not been pushed hard enough yet? We could always take a bit more. Maybe we shouldn’t put ourselves out there, run the risk of suppression. Let’s not stand up like the miners and just keep voting against our best interests because we “don’t trust any of them”.
If you enjoyed this, check out more of my creative writing elsewhere on this site.
Photo credit: Stephen Karl Treharne