Attentive readers might not expect I might find illumination in the words of the Monarch but look today at what Elizabeth R wrote this morning:
The dreadful events in London this morning have deeply shocked us all. I know I speak for the whole nation in expressing my sympathy to all those affected and the relatives of the killed and injured. I have nothing but admiration for the emergency services as they go about their work.
Go about. She uses that phrase in Christmas messages – being pleased to see people going about their business and, if I took note of it at all, I would have thought it aloof.
But I just came in from the bank and the bakery at noon in crowds going about. I like going about. Much of what I write here is about my going about, either travels of my mind or on my feet. When, however, the Nazis flattened great-grannie’s home by shovelling parachute bombs from Henkels for 72 hours straight over her Scottish city, they were really saying “don’t go about”. When those teens I taught in Poland after the fall of the Wall were under martial law in the 80s when they were in elementary school, they were being taught “don’t think you can just go about.” These few jerks today in London said the same thing.
I am far madder now than I thought I would be. I still plan to have a holiday in the States, be in public every day, not hide or even pray to be saved from such events. I am going to go about. So today, you go about, too.