Vox Meditantis

28th September 2005

I’m sitting at the bus stop where Millfield Road meets the High Street, waiting for Mum to pick me up from football practice. It’s been raining all day and there’s puddles everywhere, just like those horrible pictures from New Orleans they keep showing on the telly. Makes me proper angry, it does.

Everything’s rubbish at the moment. Mr. Hickman kept going on about Tony Blair and how the war’s going badly, and Dad was shouting at the radio this morning about petrol prices and “that bloody government.” I don’t understand half of it, but I can tell everyone’s wound up about something. Even at school, the teachers seem stressed out. Mrs. Dawson snapped at Jamie Peters for no reason yesterday.

And speaking of school, Mark Williams thinks he’s some sort of king just because his dad’s got a posh car. He’s been making everyone do what he wants in the playground, like he’s George Bush or something. Yesterday he made the Year 4s give him their lunch money, saying it was “tax.” When I told him to pack it in, he said I was just jealous because my dad works in a factory. That made me so mad I wanted to punch him, but I didn’t want to get excluded.

The worst part is, nobody listens to us kids anyway. We’re always being told to work hard at school, do our homework, help out at home, but what’s the point? I spent ages yesterday helping Dad clear out the gutters – properly soaked through I was, and my hands went all raw from scraping out the muck. But when I asked if I could stay up late to watch Match of the Day, he said no because it’s a school night. So what was the point of helping him then?

I suppose hard work makes me feel good when I actually get somewhere with it. Like when I finally mastered that difficult save in goal during training – took me weeks of getting muddy and having the ball smacked into my face, but now Coach Williams says I might make the team. Or when I helped Mum with the shopping last week and she bought me that new FIFA 2006 game. But mostly it feels like you just get ignored or told to work harder.

The rain’s getting heavier now, running down the bus shelter windows like tears. Makes me think of those people in America who lost everything in the hurricane. At least when I’m angry, I’ve still got somewhere dry to go home to. Maybe that’s something to be grateful for, even when everything else seems mad.

Everything feels like it’s at some sort of turning point, but I don’t know which way things will go. Just hope Mum remembers to pick me up before I end up as soaked as those poor sods in the flood.

The mid-2000s, marked by the Iraq War’s controversy and Hurricane Katrina’s devastation, shaped public debate on power, responsibility, and justice. In late August 2005, Katrina struck the U.S. Gulf Coast; levee and floodwall failures left about 80% of New Orleans under water, causing over a thousand deaths in Louisiana and damage exceeding $100 billion in 2005 dollars. Emergency response shortcomings prompted intense scrutiny of government at federal, state, and local levels. In the months that followed, mass evacuations, long-term displacement, and large-scale rebuilding efforts unfolded, while lessons from the disaster led to reforms in disaster planning, levee engineering, and forecasting practices in subsequent years.

Bob Lynn | © 2025 Vox Meditantis. All rights reserved. | 🌐 Translate