Sun, sea, sand and smiles

I spent last week at the seaside.

Before setting off, as I tried to tick jobs off a list and avoid anything crucial getting missed, I did question the wisdom of taking a week off in what is one of the busiest months of my year. But much as I could have done with a bit more time to get things done, I probably also needed the mental break I got from my few days away. I have come back convinced that the next few weeks will be better for me and everyone else I encounter because I did.

My grandparents lived in Weymouth when I was growing up, and an aunt still lives in Dorchester. This is the place of many, many happy childhood holiday memories. It hasn't lost its appeal. 

I shared a caravan with two people I count among my very closest friends, and three small children I am blessed to have as part of my life. I saw my aunt who I hadn't seen since pre-pandemic, and my mum had arranged to be down visiting her at the same time too. As such I got to spend time with lots of people I would describe, in different ways, as being part of my family. It was very special to share this place that means a lot to me with these people who mean a lot to me, and to invite these other children to have fun and create memories here just as I did many years ago.

With the children's school having slightly different holidays to almost everywhere else, we could enjoy not only lower prices but also everywhere being considerably less busy than it probably was the week before. 

We had perfect weather to spend long days outdoors.  

Sandwiched between long train journeys either end, we squeezed a huge amount in to a few days. We got up early. We kept busy from morning to evening. We stayed up chatting late into the night. 

We swam every day. We walked in the countryside and by the seafront. We splashed in the sea and scrambled over rocks. We visited sandy beaches and pebbly ones. Beaches where the waves lapped gently and those where they crashed against the coast.

We visited Chesil Beach and Portland Bill and Dorchester and Durdle Door. We visited the Roman Town House and saw what the sandman had been building. We found several playparks. We played indoor games and outdoor games. We painted pictures and wrote diaries.

We ate fish and chips by the harbour and lots of other delicious food back at the caravan. There was plenty of ice cream and many cups of tea.

We rode on open top buses with the wind blowing in our hair. We took the ferry across the harbour, which costs considerably more now that the 20p I remember paying when I was little but a first ever boat ride was still just as exciting. 

We took hundreds of photos and made many precious memories.

We talked and smiled and laughed together.   

It was a wonderful week. I came home tired but also refreshed. Thank you Weymouth. See you soon.

HSBC: nothing to be proud of

Birmingham Pride took place last weekend. 

I have friends for whom Pride events are incredibly important. I recognise they are an important place of witnessing to the inclusion of and radical solidarity with a community that is so often forced into the margins. 

I understand the importance for everyone to feel seen, represented, celebrated; the more so for those who often aren't. I believe deeply in the importance of welcome and inclusion: for everyone but especially for those at the edges. I believe wholeheartedly in stretching wide the boundaries of who is included ... and then stretching them further until they snap altogether. 

I am also acutely aware, as a person of faith, it is perhaps even more important, given the damage continuing to be done by the churches (and other faith communities) to the LGBTQ+ community that I nail those colours to the mast on this specific issue of inclusion even more publicly. 

I hope I find ways to do so. 

Birmingham Pride is not one of them. Even in the years the Pride Parade passed my front door, and was a member of a church which was actively visible at Birmingham Pride, I made a conscious choice not to participate. I do not necessarily need to justify this, but I want to. 

You see Birmingham Pride is sponsored by HSBC, and for all its rainbow window displays and beautifully written slogans, HSBC is not a force for good in the world. It is not a bastion of the kind of world and welcome I believe in. 

Climate change, the greatest existential threat to the future of humanity and our planet, is exacerbated by HSBC (and others) continuing to bank roll the fossil fuel industry and other extractive, exploitative industries.

HSBC remain guilty of massively financing the arms trade that fuels global conflict and keeps despotic regimes in power, (including, lets be honest, regimes whose approach to sexuality and gender identity is the very antithesis of the values of Pride). 

Big banks and the culture they create, are at the heart of facilitating the destructive practices which keep the poorest in our society, and the poorest in the world, locked into cycles of debt and powerlessness: helping the rich get ever richer while those at the bottom continue to suffer. 

This is not a well researched post with all the facts and figures and details about their investments and practices, but it is something I know to be true. Selling out to big banks and big business has no place in the world of radical inclusion I believe in, and that Pride at its best promotes.

I think Pride is a good thing: any public protest against HSBC's sponsorship of it would be at risk of being misconstrued as an objection to Pride itself so clearly I was never going to do that. So perhaps this private act of objection benefits no-one, perhaps it just sounds like an excuse to not walk in solidarity with a community who need support. But sometimes we have to do what we believe to be right even if it makes no difference and goes entirely unnoticed. Perhaps that's why I am writing this, too.

So I'm sorry: to all those who needed last weekend, and at whose side I should perhaps have been standing. I wasn't there, and this is why. On behalf of a whole other group of excluded and vulnerable people who are victims of the corruption of power and money, I couldn't. 

The past month