THE WRONG SIDE OF THE WORLD

It is a day like any other and I have been doing ordinary stuff while the rain washes away the dust from the air and a mist drifts up the valley past my kitchen window, softening the light. We roasted chestnuts on the fire for moring tea, I have a fruit cake cooking in the oven and a Middle-eastern cookbook on the bench, open at a page ready for making dinner. There is a basket of lemons from a friend and a bottle of vodka for the next batch of limoncello, apples that I must deal with from my mother and the last of the pears from my tree, ripening on the sill. Life is good at my place.

While making the cake I was thinking about Burma and China, both in the midst of shocking humanitarian disasters. I can't imagine 7,000 schools collapsing and 10,000,000 Chinese people being affected, directly, by an earthquake. We know relatively little about the cyclone in Burma; they have put politics before the people. I was thinking, in particular, about the Chinese army - actually about the individual men and women - and how horendous it would be to have to spend weeks carrying out dead people and putting them in mass graves; about the noise and the terror and pain and how I can stand in my kitchen and make a cake...and feel so inadequate.

I turned on the radio to think about something else and I heard a brief chat with a local singer called Beccy Cole before she sang one of her songs. She had been to Iraq to entertain the troops and when she came back she received a letter from someone saying they were taking her poster off the wall because she was supporting the war. There was no address to write back to so she wrote this song, called Poster Girl. Watch it or read it below.

'Poster Girl'.
You won't listen to my songs anymore
You ripped my poster off the wall
Cause I'm a singer that went to the war
You see no good in me at all
Pardon me if I believe that I haven't got it wrong
And Before you turn your back on me....
I'll sing you one more song

Cause I shook hands with a digger
On the wrong side of the world...
With a wife at home that holds her breath...
With a brand new baby girl

And the Digger fights for freedom
In a Job that must be done
And I let go of his hands so proud
To be an Aus...tral...ian

If unlike me you feel no pride at all
then go ahead and take me off your wall
cause I prefer to be a poster girl
on the wrong side of the world

And I'm just the girl who sings the crazy songs
Not qualified to sit and judge
I've been right and I've known I've been wrong
But I'm for peace and for love
And I admire the burning fire that causes you to fight
I only wish the wrong of the world
Had the same right....

Cause I listen to the wisdom of the Aussie Brigadeer
He spoke of widows and of orphans
And the need to dry their tears

And He leads the fight for freedom
In a job that must be done
And I've never been more proud to say
That I'm Aus...tral...ian

If unlike me you feel no pride at all
Then go ahead and take me...off your wall
Cause I prefer to be a poster girl
On the wrong side of the world

Maybe I'm naive to think we all could get along
But sir I read your words and all I ask...
Hear my song

I shook hands with a digger
On the wrong side of the world...
With a wife at home that holds her breath...
With a brand new baby girl

And the Digger fights for freedom
In a Job that must be done
And I've never been so proud
To say I'm Aus...tral...ian

If unlike me you feel no pride at all
Then go ahead and take me...off your wall
Cause I prefer to be a poster girl
On the wrong side of the world

I'm so proud to be a poster girl
on the wrong side of the world

I doubt anyone could listen to that and not be moved, on many levels. So many terrible things happening all over the world, so many people doing what they can to help, so many injustices and manipulations. All these are slightly removed from my everyday life but they are there, out in the open and reach into your heart in this song. Then there is that thing that comes with national pride - wherever you live and whoever you are - and I always find it surprising that that is what gets me every time, despite myself. Lastly comes the personal pain of misunderstandings. Beccy must have felt pretty hurt when she read that letter and not to have been able to personally respond would have been so frustrating after all she had experienced in Iraq. Sometimes all it takes is to stop a moment and think, for understanding to come.

The world is meant to be a sphere with no sides; but it is more like a raw diamond, with some facets shining, some rough and wild and others sharp and will cut you like a knife.