So there! It's out, and I have done something about it! I've enrolled in a course: "Storytelling For Social Change." It's available from the University of Michigan, for free, on the EdX platform.
"I Daniel Blake' a BAFTA-winning film about the use of 'social murder' * as state policy, aired on the BBC last night, so this course couldn't be more timely. This amazing exemplar of it's genre has been dismissed as, "A work of fiction by a socialist director .. " by every right-wing politician with a Twitter account. Laughable. As if they'd never wept through,"Schindler's List"!
Here's my first, 'Assignment' "To tell a story from your own experience in 250 words or less ..."
The Tale of The Chimney-Sweep And The Pig
My Dad was a Special Constable. (Community Police Volunteer) This is way back in the 1960's and I am ten. Even the regular policemen ride bicycles to patrol the estate where I lived, it was THAT long ago.
This particular Saturday, my dad was called to Farmer Peacey's pig sty. One of his pigs was missing. It was not going to be too difficult to apprehend the villain, because he'd left his spectacle case behind - I imagine it had dropped out of the thief's pocket in the tussle with the pig.
So Dad and Fred walk up to the Green's house -the one on the corner of Beacon Road.
Yards away, you can hear that pig squeal, and it was, by all accounts leading the Greens a merry dance.
Fred knocks on the door. Something of a hush falls on the place. Fred knocks again.
Slowly the door opens and a small frightened face peers, wide-eyed, through the smallest gap.
"You'd better let us in, Betty." My dad says, not unkindly.
Betty nods, and opens the door to reveal a scene of the utmost carnage. Mr Green was a competent chimney sweep, but a pig-sticker, he was not. The drab hallway was festooned with high arcs of rapidly drying blood. As was a flustered Mr Green.
Dad holds out the glasses case, and hands it over.
"Lionel," he says, "That'd better be the remains of a pig lying on your kitchen table, or you're in real trouble ... "
There will be more. I'll keep you posted.
*
Austerity is, 'social murder'