Rural England...

...and warm sunshine after rain and chill, Visiting a beloved elderly relation...a seaside town, lunch in the  park just off the High Street, with children having a Story Hour and flowers in neat rows in the ornamental flower-beds. In the afternoon a Garden Fete with a dog show and scones-with-jam-and-cream. Everything apparently traditonal. But somehow, there's an ache at the heart of it. There's a feeling of things going wrong. In the long warm evening, shouting and anger, obcenities, young people mooching about looking sullen. A lack of the laughter that used to be around.   I think it's simply there is so much family break-up, so many youg people not really feeling they belong in a settled home and with clear values, so things feel brittle...  and now with the imposition of a new law forcing everyone to pretend that two men can marry, and restrictions on what we are allowed to say about it...the old Britain has gone, and with it the good humour and tolerance that made us what we were.