All Things to All People
DIARY
All Things to All People
I cannot be all things to all people. I cannot please everyone.
Praise and criticism are in equal measure, the scales, sometimes unfairly, tip the balance in favour of ‘failed’.
Hold firm!
The scales will tip back towards the middle and, slowly nudge towards acceptance, perhaps even a hint of ‘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 I have it in Mosul.
If I feel that Covid is giving me a hard time, take a brief look on the internet at Aleppo.
During the Pandemic, the nation perceives NHS ‘front-line’. Then I read War Doctor - Surgery on the Front Line, by Doctor David Nott.
I again recall 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 of a family home. 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.
In Britain, I live in one of the truly democratic countries around the world. I learn, however, never to take for granted my freedom, the flexibility of our institutions, my freedom to express dissent without the world falling in upon me. Let me be reminded 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 almost certain to be violently terminal.
June 2022
All Rights Reserved
Liverpool
© 2022 Kenneth Thomas Webb
First written 28 November 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.
