My muse, it must be said, is male and so explains some of my writings. Mostly, I just shake my head and just keep thrashing the old keyboard.

What does this have to do with dead people who sing, you want to know? Well bear with me, all will become clear soon enough.

My female character collects river-worn fragments of glass, and is telling my protagonist all about the numerous qualities of such treasure (he is unimpressed, of course). Thick glass is old and blue glass is rare — probably a poison bottle at one time — a rare something to be found, just waiting to be discovered.

Well last week, for one reason or another, I didn’t get down to the river as I usually do on a Wednesday, but I did today. I walked again in the place where my story is set, and remembered that there is now an altogether different tale being told there — a tale from reality.

Last week, a woman was found drowned at ‘my’ bend in the river, washed up where my lovely Irish spryte collects her pretty glass. The woman was a suicide, apparently, and had decided to wash away her tears in my river’s flowing waters. I can’t, quite frankly, think of a more beautiful place to die, but lament that a setting such as that, one so very gorgeous, could not sway her away from her ghastly, sorrowful mission.

I wondered which eddy she drifted into, waiting to be found, as I wandered along the banks there. I scanned the shaded banks where the waters run slow, but deep and listened to the river’s song as it met with the shallows further on. The banks were utterly clear of glass today, unusual, because there has been quite a bit of rain over the last few days, enough to put the river level up and to bring in fresh spoils from upstream.

But wait.

I had arrived at a spot in which I highly suspected the river may have rested her tragic load, a small inlet where the water seemed to stop completely to lap out a rhythm on the pebbled beach. And there at my feet lay a piece of glass — a piece of rare, blue, glass.

Sometimes the river is quiet. Sometimes she sings. Today I like to believe that a new voice has joined with hers, and that the woman who added that voice and tears to those beautiful waters is at last at some kind of peace.

~~~~

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Is it one, two…three or more? Boats, I mean, going through lift bridges. How many is enough before one of the steerers takes the initiative and asks that person standing with her daughter and her push bike if she’d like to cross the bridge? How long should a person be reasonably expected to wait? Should boaters have to wait for pedestrians, or even (gasp) vehicles to cross said bridge before they take a turn? Yes, take a turn.

I’m not asking that every boat’s crew should lower the bridge after them if another boat can make use of that open bridge, I’m asking for a little less of the blinkered view of boaters I find happening on the canal running through my village. They don’t seem to see anything past that narrow ribbon of water sometimes, as proved by the man who did come back to lower the bridge today so that we could cross, but under utter protest. “Well I didn’t know you were waiting to cross,” he said. Okay, so we’re standing there alongside a very long and straight stretch of canal while four boats have gone through, my daughter very obviously poised to go over on her bike, but do we get preference? Are we even asked if we’d like to cross? No, we are unnoticed, not on the boater’s radar, we are less important. When I say something I am told, “Well, there’s a footbridge there.”

Sigh.

Does this help the pensioner I saw waiting in disbelief a few weeks back as boat after boat motored past him with not a wit of politeness from those on the back decks? Does it, indeed, help the people who need to cross in their cars in order to get up onto the main road from their houses down in the valley?

And when I’m told by these people that all kinds of people hang around bridges, so how were they to know…when I’m shouted at by two females on the same boat after I cross who obviously couldn’t care less about anyone not on a boat, then I despair and vow never to return to live and work on the canals as I once did.

Yes, thirteen years living and working on the cut — not just holidaying once or twice a year — give me a little authority on the subject. Perhaps thirteen years is no time at all, eh? So I ask again, boaters… exactly how many is enough?

A couple of weeks ago I was out and about at a hot-air balloon festival where there were people selling small, helium filled balloons for charity. There was to be a mass release of hundreds, each balloon bearing a ticket with the name of the person who bought said favour. The first to be found and reported to the charity would be the winner of this strange ‘race’. Except that many people don’t realise that most of these good cause balloons end up as rubbish on land or, more distressingly, at sea where some types of marine wildlife mistake them for food. They get eaten, they get stuck, and the animal starves to death.

Anyway, the balloon race charity man steps into my path and rattles a collection box at me. “Buy a balloon for the balloon race?”

I shake my head and smile politely. Then, as he shakes the box again I say, “Okay, I will give you some money, but won’t buy a balloon because of what they do to marine wildlife. You d0 know what I mean, don’t you?” He nods and looks guilty as I deposit some coins into his box.

He nods and looks guilty.

This man knows, and yet he is still promoting this bit of ‘fun’ that kills creatures of the sea slowly and painfully. Again, humanity places itself over all other Earthly species in order of importance.

I walk away shaking my head. What can one do with people like that? These people know yet they ignore. The same type who will in all probability read the first few lines of this blog post then move on to something a little less conscience-biting.

Please, dear readers, support marine wildlife by refusing to buy balloons for these ‘races’. Support the human charity promoting the race by donating at the same time. Explain why you’re doing what you’re doing. It doesn’t take much. Really.