All Things to All People
Journal
Volume 1
WE cannot be all things to all people. We cannot please everyone.
We are praised and criticised in equal measure, often the scales, unfairly, tipping the balance in favour of ‘failed’.
Hold firm!
The scales will tip back towards the middle and, maybe, even tip hugely towards ‘praise’.
Never, never give up hope!
I think especially of pen friends who came across my work through Facebook and who lived in Iraq and Afghanistan, friends in Mosul in its all-too-brief ‘enlightenment’ that gave way to a catastrophic return to medieval barbaric tyranny.
If ever one wishes to see an example of that phrase “the calm before the storm”, then you have it in Mosul. Later still, and this is still ongoing, you have Syria.
If you feel that Covid is giving you a hard time, take a brief look on the internet at Aleppo.
If, perchance, NHS on the ‘front-line’, the nation understands. But in order to keep things in perspective, take a look at an extract by Doctor David Nott in his harrowing work War Doctor - Surgery on the Front Line.
If I may, permit me to return to Mosul. I wrote the above a while back. I remember a plea “take it down now, you have no idea! Please. It’s so distressing!!” The item in question was a beautiful photograph of the trees and high hedgerow that backed the upper lawn. It was paradisical. Such is my elder sister’s gift and skill in land cultivation and husbandry. Alas, I desisted. Over the weekend, I chanced upon the film MOSUL on Netflix.
I have a clearer understanding now, and I am truly sorry to that friend from the past.
Let us, in Britain, and all of us living in the truly democratic countries around the world, never take for granted our freedom, the flexibility of our institutions, our freedom to express dissent without the world falling in upon us. Let it remind us that in other places, in spite of cameras and so forth, life is brutal for many, and for minorities, lived with the full knowledge that it is potentially violently terminal.
Kenneth Thomas Webb
Liverpool and Gloucestershire
June 8, 2022
All Rights Reserved
United Kingdom - Ukraine - Denmark - Germany - Australia - New Zealand - Canada - USA
© Kenneth Thomas Webb 2022
One of the Fifteen Founding Members of the Leaders Lodge
First written November 28, 2020
[i] The delightful banner image is by Priscilla Du Preez through Unsplash
Ken Webb is a writer and proofreader. His website, kennwebb.com, showcases his work as a writer, blogger and podcaster, resting on his successive careers as a police officer, progressing to a junior lawyer in succession and trusts as a Fellow of the Institute of Legal Executives, a retired officer with the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, and latterly, for three years, the owner and editor of two lifestyle magazines in Liverpool.
He also just handed over a successful two year chairmanship in Gloucestershire with Cheltenham Regency Probus.
Pandemic aside, he spends his time equally between his city, Liverpool, and the county of his birth, Gloucestershire.
In this fast-paced present age, proof-reading is essential. And this skill also occasionally leads to copy-editing writers’ manuscripts for submission to publishers and also student and post graduate dissertations.
