A marker

A blog isn't a diary. When you sit down to write a post, it's an exercise in editing your life. Friends read it, as well as bloggers who have come to be friends, but also there are people out there reading it that you know nothing about.

When something happens that is a body blow to your family, that leaves you gasping and unable to conjure up enthusiasm for posts about poached eggs or crafts or ships in bottles, it must be marked. But to reveal specific details would get too close, would change your blog somehow, would pull down the floaty comedy curtain that you have hung between your blog identity and your real life.

I'll just say this. Those politicians who spend their days attacking public spending, watching from afar the closure of libraries, the cuts to arts organisations, and the changes to services for ill or disabled people, I wonder if they realise what they are actually watching. It's the threat over family's livelihoods, their hopes, and the attempted destruction of things that people have worked passionately for years to build. I wonder if these politicians sleep at night.

Because we can't. We've barely slept at all this week.