Just Me!! The Butterfly effect

At four thirty this morning,I was looking out of the window at the rain and just sort of rambling in my head when I noticed how dirty they were.I live by a main road and they are hard to keep clean.So without any further ado I got out the glass cleaner and my posh cloths and proceeded to clean them,merrily cleaning away and suddenly realised that the few bits of traffic that were passing were slowing as they got up to and went past.Thinking that something was going on down the road I carried on,then I understood when the same car came past for the third time,they were watching me,lol,what have they never seen anyone clean windows before?Early morning entertainment LJ cleaning her windows. So I tried to imagine what they were thinking as they went past looking up and seeing this erm person window cleaning at 4-30am. Maybe you lot could think of some stuffI was inside by the way considering my living room is two storeys up! So I came up with things like 'crazycow' hmmm,thats a possibility. 'Why is she up so early?' well mate so are you Wonder if shes gonna jump ( that one when I had the window open trying in vain to clean some of the outside) nope we are two storeys up and I is scared of heights!
The things that go through my head!
At 8-45 I was talking to my eldest on the phone and getting her to collect milk as she informed me that she was calling for coffee,never mind I thinks I will have a couple of hours this afternoon,except at that point I had forgotten that I had agreed to have 'destructor' while his mam went to work!! So he is sat watching Cbeebies ( that channel drives me nuts!!) and I am blogging,which is a case of one eye on him and one on the screen.
Events of the day,well apprently a british soldier has come out in defence of this video that is doing the rounds of the soldiers beating some guys up in Iraq he has this to say.

Thanks to Sky and News of the World....more troops will probably be killed.
Just thought I`d let you know the full picture rather than the snippet that is being shown all over the world.
The wall that you see is the outer perimeter of a British Base.All morning Iraquis had been throwing stones and 'GRENADES' at the base. yes 'GRENADES'.The rules of engagement say that the squaddies can open fire......no question of that at all.They could have opened fire when the first GRENADE was thrown,but they didn`t....They showed massive restraint.
Then they charged the GRENADE throwers with batons....batons v GRENADE...
I`d say massive restraint again but foolish.
They then captured some rioters and gave them a good kicking....They could have shot them.
The Beating.
What should they do to people who have been bricking them and throwing grenades at them all morning?
Have a reasoned debate on the politics of the middle east and make them a cup of tea and scones?
I`d say they were f*g lucky just to get a good hiding.
If I had been on duty that day... I would have given the order to open fire as soon as the first grenade was thrown.Whoever gave the order to charge grenade throwers with batons has a screw loose...That is the only thing that has stunned me.
So dont fall for the media trap.Sky has aired the video dozens of times already.they only showed a little bit of the footage of the Iraquis rioting.The initial footage of the riot gives more balance.
You could argue that the beatings were pointless coz they had already been captured.
Logical I suppose.

But the last time I was bricked I was in a convoy in FRY...trust me...you get very angry when you see a mate get a brick in his face.

Mick.

So another perspective for all to think about!

I have thought long and hard about if I should write this or not.And how to write it when I decided that I would.It was initially brought about by something my friend Juzzzy wrote on his blog. Basically it is about prejudices but it is also personal.
A bit of background first.My daughter is gay,not a fact that has ever bothered me since i first found out,she is my daughter and it doesn`t matter to me what she is. She was at first unwilling to let me know which was a bit hurtful as I have never been a judgemental mother.It turned out however that it was because she wanted to be sure first,I found out by phoning a strange number on my itemised phone bill,on being put through to a gay and lesbian centre I merely asked them for some material to help me understand what she was going through.I left it a while before I decided to say to her " Is there something you want to tell me" All I can say is that we worked through things together and despite some really bad times when she had a couple of bad relationships and cut me off,we are now very close again.
One of the things that she had to go through,and still does go through,was/is prejudice,Homophobia.That thing that most of the people she meets tells her they dont have.
It started with her 'Friends' people who she had gone to school with for years turned thier backs on her,in the end she left and did her studies after her GCSE`s at college thats how bad they made it for her.She refuses to pretend she is something she is not and though she doesn`t say to everyone she meets I am Gay,when asked about boyfriends she will tell them.She has coped really well with it has had to leave some places where she worked because of thier attitudes when they find out,but has just got on with life and mostly tried not to let it bother her.Last year it almost cost her not only her job but her piece of mind and it could have been a lot worse.
A couple of years ago she changed her job yet again because of attitudes that had been shown towards her,she is an Auxillary nurse in a nursing home environment,she got another job more or less right away and most people seemed to accept her.She made no secret of what she was and it was turned into a joke and they laughed about it and everything was fine.Then S came to work there.S is male,41 and what at that time was described as a really nice guy.Everyone liked him and he was everyones friend,he took a shine to my daughter and they became friends,he knew she was gay,and was not bothered at all.Over the course of a few months they became best friends,this probably due to the amount of long shifts they worked together. I was pleased that she had someone she could talk to and have a laugh with.It didn`t bother me that it was a male,some of my closest friends are male.I was regaled with tales of S this and S that,and of course her other friends for she didn`t neglect them.Somehow He got put on my messanger and we had three way conversations,because she lived in the next town and we didn`t see a great deal of each other messanger was for us the best way of communicating. Then he started chatting to me when she wasn`t around,at first I felt uncomfortable,I wasn`t really happy that he was chatting to me about her,I kept saying to him,you know she is gay S,and he would reply yes of course it is purely platonic.
She assured me that is all it was and she was happy so I put away my doubts and agreed to meet him. I took my Grandson with me when I went over to spend the day,and so the little signs that would have sounded the alarm bells in my head were overlooked untill later.When I got home and I sat and thought about it,how nervous she was,how he never seemed to let her be in a room alone with me.I left it for a week or so when she rang me and said will you come over,I said yes,so over I went.It was a sunday and the idea was she was taking me to find a place I needed to find and then we were going for a pub lunch,she kept saying you didn`t tell S you were coming and I said no,now by this time she had asked him to back off and not be about so much.When I got there he was there,he came with us to the place and then for the lunch,he never left us alone together the whole time I was there,but untill she told me what was going on I couldn`t do anything.The next day I talked to her on messanger and she told me,he was arriving at 8-9 in the morning even when she had done a night shift,and staying all day,he was telling her that her friends were selfish and using her and she had to get rid of them,he tried to control what she ate what she drank,who she spoke to.So she said enough back off or the friendship was over.He promised to back off,he didn`t.He started sending me emails asking me to talk to her and make her see sense,he Im`d me telling me she was doing this and that,I told him back off give her the space she wants.
Then she cut all communication with him outside of work and thats when the fun started.He sent her letters,he consatantly called at the house,though she refused to answer the door,he emailed her,she took him off messanger and blocked his emails,he sent her even more letters.Constantly he said to her,you cannot do this I wont let you,You dont know what your doing.I didn`t know all this untill she finally broke down and asked me to help.
Work refused to change her shifts so she had to work with him,though she kept telling them what he was doing,he kept telling them she was evil,she was the bad one.And they told her that it was her own fault because she was gay!!!
What!!They beleived him when he told them that she had slept with him,even though they knew she was gay.Despite her telling them different.
Through all this she was alone,not one person would listen.Untill one woman started to think there was something wrong with his tales,if she was so bad why would he not want his shifts changed so he didn`t have to work with her? This person agreed to swap shifts with her,and slowly started to listen to her.To add up all those things that didn`t add up.The rest of them,well they still believed that being Gay was the reason.Then I was brought in,S contacted me and said something about passing where I worked the day before I was told what had happened,I said you should have called in.
He had immediatly sent my daughter an email( using a different addy) telling her that I had invited him for coffee and I believed him and that I thought she was being silly.To wind that bit up the gist is that I sent him a mail telling him if he didn`t leave her alone then I would have an injunction taken out on him and I would follow it through. I then rang her work and spoke to her manager and told her that I was having an injunction taken out on him and they could not work together in any way.After a few nasty mails from him to me and one back telling him that in future pick on someone who doesn`t have people in her corner.He didn`t go into work after my last one and was promptly sacked.Now people started to believe her,now as we found out she wasn`t the first,that he had done this before.She had gone through months of hell not because she was bad but because she was gay! She was shunned as the instigater because she was gay! She had her word doubted and thrown back in her face despite the fact that they knew she didn`t lie,because she was Gay!Homophobia is alive and well like racism it ruins lives and causes pain.
Why can people not accept other people for who they are not what they are?
Wouldn`t the world be a better place?