Beyond, hope

When there is a flood, these allotments disappear very early on. Time after time people lose the fruits of their work. The water here is going down now but there's more rain coming so it's not worth trying to clear up the chaos yet. But I bet in a month or two people will be out planting again.

I find it pretty hard to imagine being that resilient but when I try to envisage giving up altogether it chokes me. Hope is part of what makes us alive, I think.

And then...

When I got home tired from work there were two young strangers in our kitchen. He was smiling; she looked sullen and suspicious. B had taken them in from the street and had told them I could probably help her get a CV together. I have helped hundreds of people do CVs but not usually at home. However, I thought there must be a good reason so I set to, we did it and she gradually softened. As they left our daughter came home and needed the address of the Samaritans for a meeting. B, who knows few addresses, told her. I discovered he'd looked it up when he found the distraught young woman in the street, tears and rain mixed, in a foreign country with the money all gone, wanting to kill herself, and the young man at his wits' end about how to care for her.

She'll be OK. She can come back for another dose of hope sometime, if she loses hers again.