63. Slaughter... Slaughter... Slaughter...

A car is a deadly weapon in the hands of a cretin

Armed killings, gangs, warfare, even if appalling, is something that does not take us by complete surprise. What does shake us is the slaughter of normal people, in daily life. Not that there should be a reason for killing. Not even capital punishment can be justified since it is deliberately the taking of a life which none of us have any right to do since none of us are the authors of life. But, when an ordinary Tom, Jack and Jane gets done in, perhaps secretly it affects us even more than when John Kennedy got murdered because deep down we parallel that person to one of us, could be one of us, is one of us.
A driving license is an important document which should not be given out so easily

That’s why I found it hard to digest the news today. Some twenty year old cretin went zipping past a group of people in broad daylight and tore to shreds two girls, their mothers and a teenage girl all waiting for the school bus. A car in irresponsible hands is a lethal weapon, but some youngsters don’t seem to catch on to that. The irony of it, is that they seldom get killed doing it- they kill others. And some years ago when they reduced the legal age they also reduced the driving age instead of increasing it. But it seems that the age of reason is seldom reached at

eighteen or even much further on.

Apart from the sheer pleasure these kids get at killing ordinary people in the street there’s another category of individuals who seem to have never reached the age of maturity, even at forty odd. The streets are strewed with corpses of those massacred by jealous lovers. I ask myself, if love makes me stick a knife in someone- what kind of love is that to reduce me to such extremes? Okay, I know “Othello” was written more than five hundred years ago, I’m not saying anything new, but again I ask- if love reduces me to such extremes- what kind of love is that? Actually, I’ve written a whole novel harping around that topic. “Even Dandelions Go To Heaven” (of which I posted an extract in my entry 57), is not just about nuns in a convent but about love since one of the vows taken by nuns is that of chastity.

Bodies on the floor

But that is not the end of the news bulletin. It is now fashionable to murder your neighbour! A young mother, her two years old son, his grandmother, and a woman neighbour were ferociously stabbed to death by a couple who lived in the flat below. When the stabbed neighbour’s husband appeared on the scene the couple downstairs seized him and slit his throat but the man survived because he had a deformed throat which saved his life. Hence he was able to give his testimony and ended with, looking at the accused, “it was you, I saw you, you maniac!” Of course the accused deny it was them- that too, as I seemed to have mentioned elsewhere- is also fashionable.

To end this day of murders-a-al-carte the crème of la crème is yet to come. Two brothers, not yet teenagers disappeared some months ago and were last seen going off into their father’s car. They were found at the bottom of a pit where a tank was kept. This occurred because a child fell down this pit and although his legs were broken, this child was saved but on rescuing the child they noticed there were two other corpses and it was soon confirmed they were the bodies of the two missing brothers. They died of starvation and cold. Did they fall, or were they pushed? Either way, one cannot help feeling an overwhelming shame for how they died. 

The pit (above) where the brothers were found

Feeling quite nauseated by how my own species react to one another, I took the dogs for a walk, then went for a drive into town to buy a web cam, mike and earphones because some of my super busy business men want virtual lessons. Then remembering that I had to phone our Parish Priest to find out what time the coach is leaving on Thursday for the pilgrimage, I decided to go to the presbytery personally.

The Priest invited me in and told me the coach was leaving at two then asked if I would like a coffee to which I said it was nice of him to offer and as I followed him to the kitchen I asked who would make it.
“The machine,” he said. Well, I thought, that was keeping up with the times. I remember in the convent someone saying they used to dry the tea-leaves ready for re-use, and of course, coffee was unheard of. To my surprise I found one of my cousins, second removed pottering about in the kitchen- she obviously was the part-time housekeeper. The Priest went to the cupboard, pulled back the glass window and took out a shinning white small cup with a matching saucer, a shinning spoon and went to the coffee machine on the kitchen unit. I told him I usually drank powdered coffee in a big mug with hot water and a drop of milk.
“Oh,” he said apologetically, thinking I would not drink his coffee...
“No... no... no...” I said quickly, just as apologetically, “your coffee will make such a nice change- just like being in a bar!”

After the purring of the machine stopped he placed in front of me the little white cup with the frothy coffee- I was taken aback- it looked so delicious. Then from nowhere he produced a shinning sugar bowl with white sugar in it. I lifted the spoon slowly and placed some sugar on it, then spilt most of the sugar back in the bowl. I felt awful not to take some sugar after the effort he made to get out the sugar bowl. He then walked across to the sideboard again and from the glass case pulled out a box of the most delicious chocolates, all individually wrapped, he pulled one out from the socket with a gold wrapper- my favourite- and placed it beside the cup for me.

“My dear Father, I am not used to all this genteel kindness! I said overwhelmed.

And to think that in my novel, “Even Dandelions Go To Heaven” one of the main characters is a priest whom I don’t describe in a laudable manner at all. I dread to think what would happen, should it ever be published!

However, those few moments in the presbytery made me feel a little better towards the rest of mankind- in spite of the news bulletins- which is not something of little importance because the only creatures that we can really communicate with are those of our own semblance- human beings.