Diary Tuesday 23rd May 2017

Tweet

Though my personal life went well today, there was a great deal of sadness in the news. My day involved taking part in an art workshop at the local community centre, and while my drawing skills are non-existent I was asked to help get photos of the community for a public festival event at the beginning of July, which I’m happy to do. We were given lots of food for taking part in the workshop which was lovely. As the weather was very nice I got lots of photos right away in the street around the community centre and around the golf course close to my own flat. I did some job searching online too. Two events brought sadness however. The death of Roger Moore, an actor I liked from his days in The Saint on TV, and who was the first James Bond I saw on the big screen. The second tragedy was the news of an event that actually happened late last night but which I only heard about on the morning news. A cowardly suicide bomber took the lives of 22 concert goers in my birth city, Manchester as they left a gig performed by Ariana Grande. Many of those killed and critically injured were children. It gave me pride to hear how the people of Manchester selflessly helped with the rescue and took care of survivors stranded (the concert took place at a venue attached to a major railway and tram station stop, so transport was thrown into chaos and brought to a standstill). Many taxi drivers offered marooned distressed concert goers a free ride home. Other people took the victims into their houses to offer them some comfort. The killer achieved nothing as the city united and bonded rather than disintegrating in terror. Many Muslims made it clear that they have zero support for such hate-fuelled ideologies as the killer and any of his worthless accomplices subscribe to. Manchester, I am proud of you. I can’t say I even heard of Ariana Grande before though the tragedy is by no means her fault. She closed her performance with a song that carries a cruelly ironic charge to it. 2014’s One Last Time is set to a video about the end of the World as two lovers try to get together for a final embrace as a comet collides with the Earth to destroy it. Despite the deaths, I hope life and Ariana herself continue, a defiant and brave reminder that the World will not give in to pathetic attempts to hurt, frighten or even kill us. The only one who truly died last night was the bomber himself – he was dead the day he decided his life meant less than the vile cause he subscribed to – he alone will not be mourned, or his life in any way remembered as of the slightest value to any – Manchester lives on, and those who fell on the steps of the Arena concert venue, will always live on in the hearts of the people, and hopefully through the songs of Ariana Grande too. The One Last Time song on Youtube Arthur Chappell