Ugh, I'm so tired!
It's a gorgeous day though, so I think the plan is to travel the miles from Cardiff to Weston to get home, have a shower, and grab all my friends for a picnic on the beach. I may fall asleep as soon as we get there and have to be carried home, but I'm sure they'll cope! I'll drift off listening to them despairing at the profusion of flies and things in the salad and be quite happy.
I hope everyone's not too busy though. That's the problem with being on placement, and with having friends of all different ages - invariably they're all revising around the holidays and not free to fun and chilled things. This leaves me bored and struggling for things to do on sunny days like this. Woe is me and all that!
If they're all busy I may just take my book and read on the beach anyway. Although the falling asleep wouldn't be as safe! I'm reading Jane Dunn's 'Elizabeth and Mary' (as in Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots) and it's brilliant! Sometimes historians seem to think they have to fill the whole book with 18 syllable words in order to prove that they're intelligent. But Dunn is clear, concise and interesting, even more so as she concentrates more on the personalities of the characters in the story as opposed to only the historic events. Thoroughly recommended!
Anyway, roll on the summer, I could get used to this!

I always knew that the New Statesman was useful for some things! In this week's edition John Pilger's insightful article concerning Iraq led me to the most brilliant blog - www.wildfirejo.blogspot.com - check it out and prepare to have all your preconceptions about the 'good' we're doing in Iraq, and the fact that there is currently a 'ceasefire' blown away. Jo describes her ordeals and the ordeals of the ordinary people around her with compassion and clarity. Reading the most recent posts I was shocked at the events and most of all by the attitudes of the American soldiers she encountered. How can a force sent to protect and liberate the people of Iraq justify the slaughter of those very people as if they were worth nothing? The posts made me even more convinced that the motives of the American government are purely selfish and have nothing to do with the humanitarianism that they profess. Seriously - read the blog and weep.

I don't know what it is about newspapers, but just once in a while it would be nice to read good news. Obviously this is an age-old gripe with our media, but the constant drip of gloom and doom and Tony Blair is enough to make anyone jump off a bridge.
Just for once it would be nice to click on the guardian website and find out that the government had finally come to its senses and actually let the UN into Iraq, or that all supermarkets had decided to give producers a decent amount of money for the products, or that the White House had pledged to reduce their 'tax cuts for the rich' by 5% and give the revenue received to fight the HIV and aids crisis in Africa.
It's daily disappointment that none of these, or other things have occurred that makes me despair at the state of our world. Do we in the 'developed' world really hold our fellow human beings in such disregard that we can sit by happily and watch them die through starvation/disease/lack of education/our own weapons, and then claim humanity, democracy and civilization? Obviously.
Cliched as it may sound, I wonder what Jesus would say if he returned now. And would he go to the White house with messages of congratulation, or would he visit those persecuted for years and comfort them?
Maybe its not the newspapers that we need to sort out, maybe its us.