Women’s work.

 Recently I got on touch with a couple of old friends, saying it was time we met up once more for lunch in Manchester. I’m free any day of the week at the moment, I blithely told them. Then my daughter and I had a diary meeting and this current week went haywire. Grandson Number Two has just joined the reception class at the local primary school. Ostensibly to ease the children into full time school but in fact to give the reception class teacher chance to get to know the thirty 4-5 year old children in the class in half-groups, some of the children attend school in the morning and some in the afternoon. So, I was asked to collect the small boy at 12,30 yesterday and today and to have him deposited chez nous early on Thursday morning so that I can take him to school for 1.15. Then I’ll collect him and his older sister at 3.15 and bring them to our house for tea. 

So that’s this week organised. Instead of cycling to the market in Uppermill, I caught the bus mid-morning, went to the market in the usual manner, and then walked through to the primary school in Greenfield. 

En route, I spotted Greenfield’s well-dressing artwork, again, like the Delph version,  nowhere near a well but rather pleasing to look at. 

I managed to organise lunch with the aforementioned friends for one day next week.

I have been reading an article by Buthaina Subeh, an aid worker, director of the Wefaq Association for Women and Childcare (Wefaq, I

found out, is Bahrain's largest legally recognised opposition political society, it says it advocates non-violent activism) sq,loohe’s been writing about the difficulty of being an aid worker, especially a woman aid worker, in Gaza. “We live in a state of tension. When we leave the house, we entrust our home and our children to God: only God knows if we will be returning to them.”

At one point her home was itself a kind of centre for people fleeing the conflict:

“On a personal level, I’m a resident of Rafah, and in our house we were hosting 30 to 35 people who had lost their homes, and each person was in a different psychological state. Our home was also the centre for the association because we cannot go to an office, so the administrative work was done from my house, and this led to mixed feelings around duty and responsibility – and also panic, especially since the occupation was targeting those providing humanitarian services.”

Fearful that her house could be bombed at any moment, decided to go to Egypt with her daughter to find a place for the whole family to live. Before her sons were able to follow her, the invasion of Rafah happened. Her husband and sons had to go and live in tents in the Mawasi area of Khan Younis. Almost had a year later, the family is still split. And a month ago her house in Rafah was destroyed. “This house was a dream of a lifetime and it is gone. We have payments due from the price of the house, and I will continue to pay the debts for the next five years.” The unfairness of that is palpable.

That’s all.