Killing the killer

The death penalty still exists in America.

I've never seen the process before.

A man not just pleading the case of a guilty man, but pleading the case of a man who is certain to die.

The man has done something grotesque.

He's done something grotesque for a romantic reason, but there's nothing romantic about killing people and everyone knows it.

I am not trying to defend the action of the killing in any way, it looked bloody and awful and real.

Only I look at the culprit and the world is turning up with a crying face to condemn.

The woman who the man has undone with killing is weeping and cursing he should have any happiness after doing such a thing.

I hear what she is saying and if I was her, I would feel exactly the same way.

Only my eyes hate killing and my heart knows that killing never brings the killed back, ever and it does not win the dead victim a better spot in heaven.

It ruins another life completely and I do not mean the killers.

I mean the mother's, father's I could go on.

Sure, send him to prison, bang him up for the rest of his natural life.

But prison versus death can still speak and can still speak might one day give an explanation, an apology, even dare I say it an answer, for how to not have anyone die in that way ever, ever again.

He is not Satan, he is human gone wrong, reach, teach, learn.

Stop.

Impossibly cute theatre

If you happen to be in the states at the moment this is the theatre you didn't know you needed to see.

Dear Evan Hansen tells you about a boy so impossibly sweet you will look at it and curse the writer as the biggest liar in the world, but I guess Evan Hansen was never, ever, ever, ever in my class when I was at school.

Cue a selection of impossibly sweet songs from a boy I don't believe could ever exist that I can't see because I'm not in the states.

It looks fun though and if like me you are spending or spent your teens with boys who lit their farts, this film will be a lovely trip nowhere near memory lane and all the way to fantasy land, enjoy.

Curry smells heavenly

Honestly, it does.

When presented with racism that equates pervasive food smells to just one race of people.

I find my mind is full of rants.

Until I come to put pen to paper and then it all seems so absurd I can only write the words.

Curry smells heavenly.

Tongue in cheek dating

As there is so much to sadden around at the moment I thought I'd share this piece of free art I found online, I suspect it will resonate with some of you.

Not my own work

The wrong example

British people have an increasing habit of looking at America as a shining example of how they want to live.

Indeed there is a lot in the country to be admired and it has spawned many great men and women too numerous to count.

But news of the latest gun violence in Texas reminds me why I am more reticent in blindly running after an American example.

Banning hand guns in this country may have been one of the wisest political moves we made in modern times.

It is high time America found the strength to act collectively on their gun laws.

All of us stand to gain in a world where gun ownership is more restrictive.

Peeking out of the pit

In a dizzying world where sex pests can get on in life without an eyebrow raised for years and Catalonian democrats face prison at the insistence that all is still democratic.

You would be forgiven for giving up.

But take heart.

The painfully low minimum wage has been raised in Britain to a level most people would consider a bit more liveable.

Fights remain, but clearly progress on this one.

Knock back a seasonal beverage and have a listen to this.

Catalonian fractured beauty

Illness and sadness have a funny way of halting the lyrical muse.

Brexit is painfully negotiated and years of agreements initially inspired to cement European peace are squabbled over by some politicians in a way to shame even the most head strong.

Trump turns American politics into a heartbreaking farce that sees a man given power who wields it seemingly only to self aggrandise.

And so it is the turn of Catalonia to raise it's head and fight about what politics is really about, the freedom to democratically define our own futures.

I have never known what it is like to be a Catalan, but there is a strength of purpose always having given it a strong voice within Spain.

And so their leader in Exile looks to me a little bit like an older Democrat fighting for something bigger than themselves in a time when Brexit and Trump have made us knowing and disillusioned.

Catalonia seems to be saying in a mass of ballot boxes, a quieter and humbler yes we can be bigger than our times.

Yes, democracy does mean something.

They are at the turning point of something uncertain to us all.