Results tagged “blogging” from Birmingham Post - Lifestyle Blog

In the days when I was footloose and fancy-free it was not Machu Picchu or the Taj Mahal I would visit with my rack sack on my back and my camera in my pocket. It was poverty I used to travel to see.

In my late teens and early 20s, I loved to go and gawp at women bending over paddy fields in China, children begging for biros in Egypt, men in Palestine offering us wooden carvings of scenes from the Bible.

I never saw it as gawping of course.

Leisure

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?--

No time to stand beneath the boughs,
And stare as long as sheep and cows:

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass:

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night:

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance:

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began?

A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

Last month a dear friend of mine had to spend the whole night sitting on a public toilet.

Why?

Because she was using the loo in a community centre and the caretaker, not realising there was anybody left in the building, accidentally locked her in and went home for the night.

My friend had no option but to sit it out until the community centre opened for business the next day.

That would have been a horrible experience for anyone, but particularly for my friend as she is frail and recently bereaved.

Of course if she had had a mobile this would never have happened, but she is in her 70s and she did not have one.

I mention this because I am astonished to think that anyone could think the digitial divide is a myth.