I am lucky. I can walk to the end of our garden and sit in the sunshine on the cliff edge terrace overlooking Endcliffe Park. Through the yet-to-leaf trees growing tall from the foot of the old quarry immediately below I can see the road. Normally busy with all sorts of traffic it’s almost deserted. A lone car turns off Ecclesall Road onto Rustlings Road and a solitary walker crosses in the other direction. It sounds quieter than a Sunday morning, quieter even than a New Year’s Day morning.
It was then that the chopper dropped down out of the darkness on top of them. She heard the whump whump whump of the blades above her and to the rear and she raised her head, but she had to close her eyes and turn away because in that instant she was blinded by the white glare of a spotlight, and the end of a skid lighted by that glare that was swinging back and forth just above her head, forcing her to crouch down with her hands on Santiago’s shoulders. Under his clothes she felt his tense muscles, his back bowed over the wheel, and she saw his face illuminated in brief bursts from the spotlight swinging above them, all the bursts of spray that wet his face and hair.
A Wonderful Thing – or a Pisser?
I knew as I drove back in the rain swept dark from Eckington in North East Derbyshire (a ‘must win’ constituency) on the evening of 12th December. Over the previous week the canvassed support for Labour had felt to be softening and then falling away. On polling day itself people who over the previous few weeks had indicated a promise for Labour were reluctant to talk on the doorstep. People I remembered speaking to personally looked embarrassed. My last knock seemed to sum it all up. Three weeks previously I had finished a round on an upbeat note after a promising discussion with a woman in a modern bungalow. This time the door was answered by a man who just shouted ‘Brexit!’ at me before slamming the door shut in my face.
Knock! Knock!
‘Who’s there?’
‘Sorry to disturb you I’m canvassing for Stocksbridge and Penistone La …’
‘I don’t care who you’re for ….. you’re all the same you politicians …… just out for yourselves …. no honesty …. no respect for democracy …..’
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