Late Summer is a wonderful thing. Always my favourite season, if gifted. It never fails to feel like nature’s extra bounty. Good fortune and extra vitamin D power the days. It won’t be long until we turn the clocks back and plunge into the relentlessly short dark days of Winter.
Refuge for Unravelling Time at the Abbey, Sutton Coutenay, will be coming home today. It’s a sad moment. I’ve loved every single minute of showing in this glorious place, but I’m relieved now that there’ll be no more sleeping rough for this feisty little assemblage.
With this in mind, I reflect on a report read yesterday on conditions in the camp at Calais. My mind reeled and shifted back to my research about the French internment camps of 1939. Insanitary, disease ridden and with insufficient food or water, many Spanish exiles perished on those sands. How appalling that history repeats itself, how little changes, how important it is, I feel, that we must hold our gaze and not look away.
I must now consider what to do with Refuge. How best to use her (suddenly she has gender!) to continue the work. My job is to honour the exiles past and keep vigil with the present.
