Jaded and Junked

After the last, what could possibly follow? That is not something one can just say and then pass by. It remains forever present as the mark of a before and an after time.

There was a time before one heard that children had been murdered as decoys for a bomber, and there is now only time after one knew it had occurred. It is as if there is, for the human race, more than one expulsion from the Garden of Eden, more than one fatal apple consumed and innocence lost in eating from the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. A terrible 'Groundhog Day' of sin and sorrow, ever repeating itself time after time after time.

I wish I knew their names - the murdered children - I wish I had some other knowledge of them other than as terrified, desperate infants. Pray God they did not know what was about to happen, nor had time in that moment of explosion to suffer.

Nothing can follow that, and therefore this is a nothing simply because stasis would lead to despair.

Today the post duly arrived with its predictable mix of entirely unwished-for junk letters, largely undesirable if inevitable bills plus other formal demands on one's time or purse, and - rarely - delightful personal correspondence from people wishing to communicate with people.

The junk mail is the easiest to manage. One simply sweeps it into the rubbish bin without a further thought.

This morning, however, as the kettle seemed to be taking an inordinate amount of time boiling I chanced to open - out of the mildest of curiosities - a printed envelope containing no clue of the cold-calling company that sent it. It must have been its very anonymity that sufficiently intrigued.

It was bulky, it was stiff and on opening a startling surprise. For inside the one envelope was another, rather grandiosely marked 'Disguised Mail.' From my Bank with the latest credit card inside. How very sad to think that such subterfuge is considered necessary to deter fraud and pilfering en route.

Almost even - until one reflected on the matter for a moment - quite cunning.

Reflection though gave another view to the matter. Had not the kettle been performing below par, the seeming junk letter would have passed unregarded straight into the bin and out onto the municipal rubbish heap. And not just in the Palladas household; one imagines something entirely similar in most homes in the land: junk - bin - sorted.

Had my Bank the foresight to warn me to expect some cunning stunt a la Spooks it might make sense. That lacking though, one can only picture that there are alert and well-briefed fraudsters lurking in sorting offices and on rubbish heaps to spot what they would quickly pick up on as 'disguised' credit card bearing envelopes.

No doubt it has seemed a good idea at the time - to send in effect an Inspector Clouseau mouse to catch a Russian Mafia cat - to some group of middle-managers all wishing they had joined MI5 and not HSBC. Secretly seeing themselves as that Craig chappie - the new James Bond I am informed and rather good at the role it seems - not wasting their lives in some safe and deadly dull position within banking, but out on the streets of Monte Carlo by night setting evil in its place and a good gal in hers.

Do wish though they had thought through the consequences. Should have asked Bro. Charles - he majors on organisational consequences apparently.

....And there you have it. Some light words wrought with unease and almost distaste, simply to try not to re-write what one had the day before. Because that before is all that seems still to matter.

I do now though, after some thirty years study, fully undertand the words of T S Eliot in the first stanza of 'Burnt Norton' - "If all time is eternally present / All time is unredeemable."

Redeem us from this terrible present I pray thee O Lord.