People from Aberystwyth, Borth and Machynlleth came together to take action in novel way to mark White Ribbon Day. The United Nations General Assembly has designated 25th November as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. White Ribbon Day in the UK calls on all men to take a stand against sexism and gender-based violence in all of its forms. Starting in Aberystwyth, local activist choir Côr Gobaith sang people aboard the 10 O’clock train on the Sunday morning. Handing our information on the campaign to anyone who wanted it, choir members then boarded the train and travelled to Borth where they were joined by small contingent from the town. In Machynlleth, Côr Gobaith and friends sang people off the train and then gave an impromptu concert in the stations nice warm waiting room. As noon approached the choir and concert goers adjourned to the front of the station to sing Machynlleth’s White Ribbon Day bike ride on its way. Côr Gobaith dedicated a song to former Machynlleth resident Rebecca Sullivan whose tragic death has devastated her many friends in the area: "Rebecca Sulllivan, you are dancing with me, dancing for the love of life..." The 'amazingly talented Ms Kitty O’Blitherin' then delivered a thought-provoking performance poem ‘Safe’. The poem highlighted how attitudes may have, for  the most part, changed for the better in Western Society over recent years, but that much remains to be done. A participant then read the White Ribbon pledge: “I swear never to commit, excuse or remain silent about male violence against women.”
 
Bike ride organiser Allan Shepherd said: “I wore a white ribbon on my bike rounds across Europe and as I love cycling so much I also wanted to celebrate non-violence through cycling on Sunday.”
 
With the bike ride set safely on its way, Aberystwyth and Borth people boarded the next train home, still spreading the word through singing and distributing fliers. Organisers thanked Transport for Wales who, although beleaguered by their well-publicised operating difficulties due to storm damage and ageing trains, rose to the occasion to support the campaign and facilitate Sunday’s triple-town action.

Cor Gobaith sing the White Ribbon Day cycle ride on its way outside Machylleth railway station

Everything is true, believe everything…
Fiction is fact?
And, at the same time, believe nothing – it’s all lies.
Virtual reality is reality, virtual life is life.
We’re all dead.
Ringers.
Half-life is the whole thing, tailing away for ever.
Conspiracy theory is a conspiracy.
With nothing to hold on to, you have already let go.
You just don’t know it yet.
Kill the ducks because ducks fart and their farts can kill your dog.
Man’s best friend.
Kill the dogs, they’re eating your ducks!
Have you…
What…
Been drinking, popped anything?
Have you?
Well, yes and no.
Which
Both. And neither. Who needs a dose of unreality.
When nothing is real.
I’m learning – but I know there’s nothing to teach; I understand.
Nothing.
Is this how it happens then, alien invasion?
Conspiracy theory is…
Yes, yes, but it’s also true.
And a pack of lies.
We can hold onto the certainty of the physical sciences can’t we, to materiality?
If you like, but it will do you no good to know two plus two equals four, or that if you jump off a tall building the acceleration due to gravity, g, is approximately nine point eight one metres per second per second.
Or that, if the building is high enough and I fall long enough, then I will reach a terminal velocity.
That’s what we’ll call it!
What?
Our theory that everything is fucked up and that nothing is fucked here, dude.
Our theory that there can be not theory, including our own…
And that all explanations are true – including alien invasion of morality rather than territory.
That we are always already the aliens, and that we are not.
Will we fight, red in tooth and claw, until there are no survivors?
Or will we simply stop caring, stop struggling, stop loving – and hating?
Is that how hope is to be defined for us?
By us?

So far, the trip had been a disaster. It was supposed to have been an adventure: a week in the mountains of the Eastern Highlands with her new friends from boarding school; her only friends, Sabrina and Bubbles. Lindsay was delighted. But as soon as they arrived at the cottage it was obvious that the last thing the others wanted to do was explore the countryside. On the first night they'd insisted on going out rather than plan the next day's hike. So the three of them had hitched a lift to the local hotel, The Selous Star, with a neighbouring white farmer. There they met two young Italian guys, holidaymakers. Sabrina and Bubbles flirted and giggled, got drunk, and accepted a careering lift home from their newfound admirers at three in the morning. The next day was a right off. Bubbles screamed at Mai Rudo, the maid, when she came to clean at eight O'clock - as they'd asked her to do - and neither she nor Sabrina surfaced until after lunch. They passed the rest of the day bemoaning their hangovers.
      ‘Sis, man!’
      That night they insisted on hitching to The Selous Star again, however. Cue a repeat performance, but this time Roberto and ‘darling Dino’ stayed the night. Lindsay went to bed and locked herself in her room. Sabrina and Bubbles spent the following day, after the guys had finally left, doing their nails and comparing conquests. That night, Saturday, the guys came and picked them up to go dancing. Lindsay stayed at the cottage: home alone; her own hollow Hollywood joke made at her own expense.
      This morning, before dawn, she'd put on her shorts and boots, packed her rucksack with provisions, taken her compass and map, and left the cottage at first light. She was going to climb Nyoka Mountain.
      The Italians' hired Toyota Hi-Lux was parked in the yard.
      It was a long walk to the base of the mountain - not always visible from the faint path that Lindsay followed through the bush and Msasa woodland. The summit was an outcrop of igneous rock, produced by ancient volcanic activity. From a certain angle it was said to resemble the head of a serpent. That was how it got its name: Nyoka meant snake in the Shona language. The map showed a path running up its western face. All Lindsay had to do was follow that path.
      Easier said.
      By the time she got to the base of the mountain the path had disappeared, reclaimed by the relentless creep of vegetation like a cut scabbed over. It was mid-morning and the sun was high and searing in a cloudless blue sky. Lindsay followed the map as best she could, 'bhundu bashing' her way through tall grass and plants which snared her ankles. There were scrubby trees and savagely spiked cacti but no shade. After an hour or so of tough going, Lindsay rested by a babbling stream, drank a little water and filled her canteen. Saving the fruit for later, she ate some macadamia nuts from her provisions and reapplied the sun-cream that had washed off her face in rivulets of sweat. She lay back and shielded her eyes with her arm.
      Sabrina and Bubbles. Why had they come?
      It hadn't been easy to ask them. Lindsay was used to not having friends at school, familiar with being the odd one out. She didn't expect anything else. Though she was involved in sports, pretty damned good at the academic stuff, even if she did have to say it herself, and not antisocial, she wasn't popular. She didn't fit in. She was neither a maverick nor an outcast, just peripheral. It didn't bother her anymore, not really. She'd found a place, an island within herself.
      Then, just this term, in Upper Sixth, Sabrina started to talk to her. They hung-out at break times, did A-level prep together. And, of course, where Sabrina went, so went Bubbles. But that was okay. Try as she might to help, though, Lindsay thought that Bubbles’ potential for any exam of success was extremely limited. Sabrina might just make it, if she could only keep her attention on a subject and not be distracted by make-up, gossip, dieting, boys... Most anything, really.
      Both girls had been enthusiastic when Lindsay shyly proposed walking in Nyanga for the holidays. Sabrina thought it ‘a Mega scheme with a capital Meg’. ‘Anything to get away from the Wrinkly Ps’, Bubbles said, meaning her parents. Which was about the closest she came to expressing enthusiasm. Yet, once here, neither girl had taken a step outside the cottage except to go ‘man-trapping’ at The Selous Star. Yesterday afternoon, Sabrina had sneered at Lindsay's suggestion that they leave Bubbles with her copy of Cosmo and her violet nail polish and at least investigate the immediate surroundings.
      ‘What for? It’s just trees and bugs. And blacks. What if we met a gang of blacks?’
      At once the most terrifying and titillating of prospects.
      The sounds of the day drifted in to keep Lindsay company: bird-calls, crickets, the faint scurry of leaves disturbed by the wispiest of breezes. She watched a large black and yellow butterfly flit past. A Scarlet-chested Sunbird settled on a Protea nearby and busied itself extracting nectar. A Bataleur eagle swept lazy over the landscape, circling low enough for Lindsay to make out the red shock of its mask. This is what she'd come for. This is what she'd wanted to share with Sabrina.
      Two hours later, ‘Nature’ seemed much less idyllic. Lindsay was lost and no matter how she turned the map or aimed her compass, she couldn't find a way out of the tangling undergrowth that beleaguered her. She couldn't even see the way she'd come: her tracks had been consumed as if she'd never been. The lowering grey face of the mountain no longer expressed a challenging invite. The noises from the bush no longer thrilled and encouraged her. She tried striking off in different directions, but each time she faced an impenetrable barrier. Thorns raked her, blackjacks stuck to her clothing, spiky seed pods prickled through her socks. She had to remove three ticks from her bare legs. Eventually, she gave up and sat down in the scant shade of a stunted Msasa. Tired and afraid, she fought back the feeling of panic that threatened to engulf her along with the jungle. Lost and alone, disaster compounding disaster. After a while, something caused her to look up.
      A boy was watching her.
      Rather, he wasn't watching her. He stood about a dozen paces away, chewing on a stalk of grass and looking away from her, towards the mountain. An African boy, hatless and bare-foot. He wore an old pair of blue jeans with the knees out and a faded olive T-shirt with no sleeves. Lindsay summoned all her exclusive public-school resolve, wiped tears she hadn't noticed from her eyes, and stood.
      'Is there a path up the mountain?' She heard her voice, small and edgy, pathetic, yet still inflected by precedence. The boy didn't answer, didn't look at her, but pointed to the South, away from the glare of the sun. Lindsay picked up her pack.
      'Can you show me?'
      The boy dropped his stalk of grass and began walking in the direction he'd indicated. Lindsay followed. They climbed steadily, the boy somehow finding a path of sorts. He kept his distance of a dozen or so paces in front of her, moving easily, almost silently. Whenever she tired and needed a breather, he seemed to sense it and stopped to wait. After some time, they emerged from the bush. The grass gave way to rock and they made their way between implausibly balanced stands of boulders. If you studied them, there were huge recumbent abstractions of women, men hunched in postures of deep introspection, children's faces, megalithic animals... It was as though Henry Moore, whom Lindsay had enthusiastically learned about in Art, had been given carte blanche to sculpt the terrain.
      An occasional tree somehow flourished, growing wherever there was the slightest of fault-lines in the rock. There were mountain flowers, myriad reds and vibrant purples. Krantz aloes prospered. Here and there a spectacular candelabra tree grew. A cabbage tree sprouted impossibly from the rock face. Lindsay squeezed its pale, corky bark as she passed. The vegetation was primal, totally disconnected from an age of four-by-four cars and holidaymakers.
      It was stunning.
      Lindsay stopped for a drink of water and the boy stopped too, leaning against a boulder, not looking back. Lindsay watched him as she drank from her canteen. He must be around seventeen, a year or so younger than her. It was difficult to tell. She hadn't had the chance to study his face, only caught the odd glimpse. He had long lashes that whispered over his eyes like a child's. There wasn't a spare ounce of flesh on his body. His fine frame was enfolded only by muscle and tendon, sheathed with skin: velvet skin, the colour of dark chocolate. Lindsay had watched him move: the sinuous flow of his back, his legs, his buttocks. Lithe. Lindsay swallowed harder than water. She should send him back, tell him she could manage from here. But she couldn't. Then she should back-track; it was getting late. She shouldn't be up here when night fell. Alone.
      With him.
      'Would you like some water?' she asked. He turned his head slowly and looked straight at her, his face expressionless. There was a kindness about the eyes, though. And an incongruous wisdom, beyond his years; beyond her. The boy didn't answer but put a finger to his lips, turned and pointed.
      'A Milkwood tree?' Lindsay confirmed and queried at once. What was the big deal?
      The boy turned to face her, meeting and somehow redirecting her gaze. He continued to point at the tree with its spreading branches and dark, luxuriant foliage. A parasitic red creeper gave its host a flowering crimson crown.
      'So wh...' Lindsay began.
      But then she saw it, flattened along a stout branch, one front leg hanging down. Frame by frame she pieced it all together, discerning its distinctive coat from the dappled shadow pattern of the leaves. She saw its tail trailing along the branch. Lindsay drew a sharp but silent breath. The harder she stared the more impossible it seemed.
      A leopard.
      Though the space stretched and expanded for the image to imprint itself forever on her memory, there was really only a heartbeat to take it all in. As she gaped, the leopard’s eyes opened - sending an electric thrill coursing through Lindsay’s entire body. The end of its tail flicked and flickered. For an instant the creature looked straight at her, the amber peril of its eyes. Then it languidly undid itself from the tree, of which it had seemed such an integral part, and slid to the ground, soundlessly, raising not the slightest puff of dust. In a few unhurried, silky movements it made the cover of the bush. Lindsay exhaled, heard herself breathe, was aware of everything.
      Absolutely everything tingled.
      One hundred percent alive.
      The boy detached himself from the rock and gestured for her to follow. He climbed away to their left, skirting the Milkwood tree. Hurriedly, clumsily, gathering her pack, Lindsay followed, glancing back often towards the tree and the place where the leopard had been absorbed into the earth. Her legs were jelly.
      The boy did not pause to allow her to rest again, however, maintaining a steady pace up the mountain. Lindsay didn't try to speak, wasn't sure she still had a voice. Her tongue sensed her mouth as an arid, barren cave. After about an hour of pursuing a rocky, zigzag route they reached the summit. It was flat, smooth rock, almost bare. The sun was beginning to sink into a council of mountains, magnificent beyond human sculpture. Shadows stretched across the plane, settling for the night. The whole of nature seemed to yawn, wondrously weary. Sabrina and Bubbles would be doing their make-up, painting themselves to be picked up and taken out to the hotel. Lindsay sat down to watch the sunset paint the sky purple and navy, red and orange. The amber of the leopard's eyes. Too late to think of going back tonight. The African boy settled on his haunches only a few yards away, turned aside, selecting a dry stem of grass to pluck and chew.
      But he accepted the apple Lindsay offered.

      No day to anticipate, no day to look up
      'Why don't you ever write nice, happy songs?' his mother asked.
      'There are no nice, happy songs,' he scowled. And he left her on the doorstep, waving. He didn't look back.
      Blinding sun or needle rain, empty loving cup
      Silly cow. Yoz – Josiah for Christ’s sake! - wouldn't play her anything ever again. Never. Happy songs? In this day and age? In his life? Get real. His hand flexed on the data-stick in his pocket: his songs. It started to rain and he stumped a little faster down the street, dragging his collar up around his ears. The black plastic dustbin bag with his weekly washing in started to weigh heavy on his shoulder.
      She wasn't such a bad old stick herself though, the mum. Fed him up like a Christmas goose of a Sunday lunchtime. His belly bulged now, tight as a drum. And she put his washing through the machine while he watched telly. And there was a twenty in the breast pocket of his denim jacket. Yoz hadn't looked, but he knew it would be there. Nah, she was all right. No bleedin' ear for music that's all. It was the dad who was the real bastard.
      'Got a job yet?' from over the Mail On Sunday, from over steel-framed glasses.
      'Nah.' Without meeting his father's eyes.
      'Looked at all?'
      'Nah,’ accompanied by a torpid shrug, deliberately winding the old man up.
      'He's making his music aren't you, son?' from the mum with a hand on his shoulder. Making it worse.
      'Huh. Music.' Subtitled scrounger, no-son-of-mine, wastrel. And the crack of the newspaper as his father disappeared behind the headline NEW pop group or devil spawn?
      That would be all Yoz heard from the dad all day, and the last time he'd show his face. The old pulp-for-brains baldie shithead. Writing songs and making music would never be a 'proper job' to him. Even if Yoz was number one in the charts, acclaimed as the world's greatest living lyricist, with money falling out of his pockets and a world tour in the offing, it still wouldn't be right. The old man would rather see him in the armed services, or with a nice steady desk job in the civil service, or studying to be a civil engineer - something Yoz had once, at fourteen, shown a brief interest in. He'd fancied building a stonking great bridge. And then blowing it up. He stamped out the rhythm of his irritation on the wet pavement, mumbling along.
      'Civil engineer, daddy dear, daddy dear? No way, no fucking fear. No can do. Build your own bridges, right. Cos I'm Dina-gelignite. An' if you're looking for a fight, well screw you!'
      In her way, the mum would be worse.
      'That's nice, son,' as he went double platinum.
      'Goodness!' as he was hailed bigger than the Beatles.
      'Lovely,' as his music inspired a generation.
      'But why don't you ever write nice, happy songs?'
      He just got to the train in time, bundling his bag of washing inside and slotting between the doors as they snapped at his heels. There were plenty of seats at this time on a Sunday afternoon and he sat down with the black bag sandwiched between his knees. The rain had soaked through his jacket, and he was damp and uncomfortable. He belched, and then rubbed his stomach. Heartburn, that would be the next bleedin' thing.
      Sunday service, Sunday suit, Sunday clouds and same
      Sunday is no sunny day by any other name
      The loose threads of an idea for a song began to weave together in his head. He'd been getting fragments of the melody all day, now it started to gel. Inspired by Sunday in Suburbia, Sunday Lunch, The Sunday Paper. Words, phrases, sounds that he wanted to incorporate, played in his head. He closed his eyes to listen more closely, tapping the beat on his drum of a stomach, counter-pointing that with a rustling rhythm skooshed on the plastic laundry bag. Yeah, he had a song in the making. A little girl opposite started dancing to the strange rustle and tump music he was making. He frowned hard at her and stopped playing. She stopped dancing, and buried her face in her mother's lap. She started to cry. Yoz belched again. He had a title for his song too: Acid Sunday.
      Acid Sunday, Acid Sunday, what's the one day, what's the score?
      Home James-Privatised-Rail-Company-Bastards, there is work to be done.
      As soon as he was in the door of his basement flat, it was straight to the keyboard and the mixing desk. He simply discarded the washing bag, threw off his wet jacket, switched on his equipment, plugged in the guitar and started to scrape out the chords of his song. As usual, it wasn't as easy to get it together as it had seemed when the ideas came. Now came the hard work. He stopped playing and put the kettle on for coffee. But he forgot to make it, absorbed by the process of making music. He programmed in rhythm, selected a baseline, laid some guitar on that, sampled some stuff, and tried out some lyrics.
      The scars are scars of yesterday but blood spills fresh like snow
      Hope, the cruellest company, as every trickster knows
      Two hours later he still hadn't had a coffee. And he still hadn't got the song he wanted. There had to be more loathing, more despite, more attitude. More of a sneer. It was still too weak, too flimsy, too bleedin' melodic. He didn't want hope and humanity; he wanted parody and pointlessness, comfort but no joy, bourgeois stasis. He wanted the hopelessness of his mother and father, their lifestyle, their relationship, their pathetic aspirations.
      Father in rank solitude, mother close at hand
      Guardians of the veil of fear that covers up this land
      Loving, cold as a slab dead fish, duty to be done
      Feeling old as a drab dread wish, beauty on the run
       Yoz dragged his fingers frantically through his hair. Then he was off. Out through the flat door, up the single flight of stairs, into the hallway. She was halfway up the stairs to the first floor, dressed in red, carrying a bag of groceries in each hand.
      'I need someone to moan,' he greeted her.
      'Do you say this to all the girls?'
      'What?' Yoz was too distracted to be embarrassed. 'I need the sound of... I need a woman's voice. To record. I'm making... I...' he petered out.
      'Okay,' she said, turned around and started to descend towards him.
      'Good, come on.'
      'Wait,' she said, and passed him the shopping bags to carry. Absently he accepted the load and preceded her down into the basement.
      'Nice place,' she said as they entered.
      'What?' Yoz was suddenly aware of the mess: the clothes scattered everywhere – a pair of boxer shorts on top of the telly, the empty cans, the mouldering foil take-away trays. 'I've been busy,' he explained brusquely.
      'So I see.'
      'I haven't got time for that stuff. Right, what you've got to do is...'
      'I'm not doing anything unless you're a bit nicer.'
      'Nicer?'
      'Nicer,' she confirmed.
      Acid Sunday, acid Sunday what's the one day, what's the score?
      Over her shoulder Yoz caught sight of himself in the dusty mirror hanging askew on the wall. His hair stood ridiculously up on end from running his fingers through it as he worked; he was two days unshaven - an unconscious prerequisite for visiting the parents; his clothes were grubby and creased. Not a pretty sight.
      'Sorry,' he said a bit sulkily, 'my head's full up with this song. I make music.'
      'I've heard,' she smiled.
      And Yoz realised how attractive she was.
      'Does it disturb you?' he asked. He'd seen her before of course, disappearing up the stairs, or rushing out. They'd nodded, but never spoken.
      'We live right above you,' she said instead of course it bloody does. 'There's just the hallway between your ceiling and our floor - like a big speaker cabinet.'
      She was fundamentally gorgeous.   
      'I'm sorry,' he squirmed, 'you should have said.' She had beautiful brown skin and laughing eyes, hair straightened and shining gloss-black, held back with a red band, whiter-than-white teeth, dazzling smile. Yoz moved round to stand between her and the TV, trying to hide the boxers.
      'We don't mind,' she said. Drops of rain glittered and glistened in her hair.
      'We?' Yoz asked, desperate to sound casual. She'd blow it now, My boyfriend and I.
      'My flat-mate, and me,' she said.
      'Flat-mate?'
      'Al.'
      'Al?'
      'Alison.'
      There is a God.
      Unless…
      'The blond-haired woman?' Yoz asked. 'Thin?' He'd seen her too, coming and going.          
      'Alison,' she confirmed. 'She's got an eating disorder.'
      'Sorry,' he said.
      'She's working through it.’
      ‘You’re not…’
      ‘Just mates,’ she said.
      There is also a Goddess.
      ‘Looks like you got a food problem too.' She nodded to the piles of foil dishes. 'MSG junkie?'
      'The Chinese,' Yoz shrugged. 'When I'm working I forget to eat. They're open twenty-four hours,' he shrugged again. He wished he'd cleaned up, wished...
      'You wanted me to moan,' she reminded him, arching an eyebrow.
      'Eh?' Yoz had forgotten his song. He gulped. 'Oh yeah.' Indicating she should follow, he led the way, stepping carefully through the debris, to the relatively clear corner where he worked.
      'There,' he said and passed her a microphone. 'What I want, what I'm after is...'
      'I'm Grace, by the way.'
      'You are,' Yoz confirmed distractedly as he set the sliders on the mixer. 'I mean, you are? I'm Yoz.' Awkwardly they shook hands, both smiling and shying from the eye-bright eye contact they made.
      'Nice to meet you,' she said, and gently withdrew her warm hand from his. 'Shall we?'
      'Right,' Yoz said, busily setting up the recording. 'Okay, what I need is...' He looked at Grace and realised how impossible it was going to be now to make his request. 'Uh... Could you moan?'
      'Just moan, like in pain? Or like about the weather or something?'
      'Like in bed,' Yoz said, giving Grace a nervous, apologetic, grin.
      She rolled her eyes:  'Like Je t'aime?!'
      'No. Like, you know, when it's almost painful, when it breaks your heart - when you want to cry.'
      'It's never been like that,' Grace said.
      'Uh... I mean... Imagine... It hasn't for me either, but... I imagine... I...'
      'You're blushing.'
      'You're making me.'
      'What're you making here, porn?'
      'It's a dance track. Sort of about - uh - marriage, the beginning, and the end; about the pain in loving, in sharing broken dreams... About...' Yoz clenched his fist, lost for words. 'If I could find the right words, I'd be a writer, right.'
      'Maybe you should play it to me?'
      He did. And winced.
      No day to anticipate, no day to look up
      Blinding sun or needle rain, empty loving cup
      The jagged techno baseline, the screeching-wailing-lamenting garage guitar, the nihilist lyrics intoned in a portentous monotone.
      'It's nowhere near finished,' he explained. 'It's a bit...  A bit...'
      'Miserable,' Grace supplied.
      'Well...' Yoz began grumpily.
      'When was the last time you went dancing?'
      'Eh?'
      'Your music's good, right, I can hear that. But I reckon you've been stuck down here too long. What's missing is... Like joy or something.'
      'Joy!' Yoz spat out the word. 'In this dog-shit country, in this dead-meat life?'
      'Joy,' Grace repeated. 'At the moment,' and she indicated the desk where the tape still revolved – though silently, 'that's music to slit your wrists to, innit, not dance?'
      'Mm... But...' Yoz tried in vain to mount a defence.
      'You need to go out and have some fun,' Grace decided.
      'Fun?!'
      'Tonight.'
      'Tonight?'
      'Tonight. I'll take you down Arkadia. What do you say?'
      'I... I...' Yoz thought hard, but only for half a second, 'Okay.' And remembering the mum's gift nestling in his jacket pocket, 'But it's my treat. I mean it's for my music, so...'
      'Whatever,' Grace smiled and rose, 'I'll pick you up about nine, okay?'
      But tonight you come as shadow, dance the dark away
      Bring brightness to the bitterness of another no way day
 
The following evening Yoz began to rework his song. He grinned as he listened to the sounds he'd recorded late last night in his cleaned up flat. Grace could moan all right. Joyously. And, clearly, he could do much the same. Outside the sun was going down, a deep red lipstick kiss smudged across the sky. To work! Yoz tweaked the rhythm and picked up his guitar. He had a new title for the song now - Acid Sunday Happy Monday Morning.
      Acid Sunday, acid Sunday, what's the one day, what's the score?
      Happy Monday, have some fun day, seen you one way, want some more
      The vision of you, the grace to see in the country of the blind
      Monday morning melody, you play lyric on - my – mind
      What would the old man think of this one? And The Mail On Sunday?
      Screw them.

Tomorrow I am joining others across the world in a fast to commemorate the estimated 300,000 people who died in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagaski. I've never fasted before... If I'm late eating a meal, I tend to get very angry, which I attribute to 'low blood sugar' - though I'm not that sort of doctor, so I know very little of how the body works and I'm only repeating a 'common wisdom'. In Sri Lanka, I did once miss my lunch, but that was by way of a practical joke played on a friend. My point is that, extraordinarily, I have never been hungry let alone starved in a world where 2.8 million people died in famines the first ten years of this century alone!  Meanwhile, in the 20th century that I grew up in it is estimated 187 million people died in wars. I have never had to fight in or run from armed conflict.

Though it sounds unbelievable, the first decade of the 21st century has seen fewer victims of war than any other decade in the last 100 years. That said, on average 55,000 people were still killed in armed conflict every year. So, the current 'low' seems more a reflection of the horrifying rate of bloodshed in the relatively recent past. A past where, we are told, nuclear weapons kept the peace. Then, it feels to me that the current relative lull in war and its death tolls are the calm before the storm...

As part of an ongoing  project, for the last six months or so I've been folding peace cranes almost everyday, that effort building now towards the Nae Nukes Anywhere rally at Faslane on 22nd September. My practice means that, whether intellectually or emotionally or even sub-consciously, I've been focused on nuclear war for quite a while. When I join the fast to commemorate the victims of nuclear weapons, then, I will be commemorating the victims of the present and the future as well as of the past. I will probably only manage a one-day fast at this first attempt, but my thoughts will be with everyone fasting. On Nagasaki Day, Thursday 9th, I will be singing with Cor Gobaith at the Peace Tree in Aberystwyth. We find all sorts of ways to express our desperate hopes for a world free from famine as well as from war; hopes for a politics of trust, diversity and mutual aid.

Peace Cranes roost in the roof of a marquis at the Rencontres de Chorales Revolutionnaires in France last month

That is until the end of June, all updates on the MAD Cabaret at the Cowley Club in Brighton on Thursday 28th June from &pm will appear on our Mad Cab event page.  Meanwhile, updates on the Nuclear refrain project more widely will miraculously appear on our Crowdfunder page - where you can support us with a little of your hard-earned cash, your peace crane folding efforts, and/or your ideas (so, this blog will be quiet for a while, but then...)

Stop Press: The MAD Cabaret will star Atilla the Stockbroker!

As the MAD Cabaret on 28th June at the Cowley Club in Brighton comes together, peace cranes took a moment out this weekend to enjoy the sunset over Cardigan Bay.

The crazy list of fab acts for the MAD Cabaret continues to be revealed on an almost daily basis. So far, sensational singer song-writers Phil Johnstone, Mike Reinstein and Robb Johnson... More big names of comedy and performance poetry coming, including the ultimate Brighton cabaret act coup! Have a guess, go on (you'll be gobsmacked)

​

Gissa clue?

Watch the all action video!

Then make flocks cranes, send us ideas, and pledge some money please!

Mutually Assured Distraction at the Cowley Club in Brighton, 7 till 11pm, Thursday 28th June...