We see so many examples of both in modern society and it comes in many many forms.
Yesterday I came across both. Smashing a table tennis table on a local park may not be construed as evil and more a case of vandalism but of course there are different shades of good and evil.
And I couldn't help think about how good and bad exist in every community and I saw both within a few minutes. Getting a table tennis table on our park took a lot of work by volunteers. Grants were obtained, meetings were held, orders were placed, construction companies were met with and, after a lot of effort, the table was in place.
It stayed in place for some time. Bats and balls were provided and survived as families enjoyed a game. That may be a pretty simplistic assessment but it is actually what happened. Then along came one or more people who decided that the table needed to be destroyed. So they did a huge amount of initial damage which was repaired. Whether it was the same person(s) again I have no idea but they then made a huge hole in the table. To do this they must have had a huge piece of concrete or something equally large.
Discussions took place about whether it could be repaired again but that no longer seems possible as another act of vandalism has taken place and made it impossible to repair
I have lived in Hethersett long enough to know that vandalism goes in waves. You have a couple of years being vandal free and then another wave comes along. This continues almost as a cycle of damage and the bigger our village gets, the more vandalism there is likely to be.
One of my readers pointed out that this kind of thing is endemic to our society and something he has to deal with on a daily basis. And this is terribly sad in itself.
Then I see the other side of the coin. Young children (in this case Hethersett Rainbows) enjoying friendship and life to the full and it warms the heart. The important thing is to hold onto the good and help it to replace the bad.
Of course this isn't easy. Every morning I get up and pretty much the first thing I do is check my e-mails and my Facebook feed etc and catch up on the news. There was gloom and despondency yesterday over the economy. One interviewee said this Parliament has been the worst ever for price rises, cost of living rises and inflation. That's quite a claim when you take into account the problems of the 1970s.
Putin is the epitome of evil. I really don't like talking about religion and sometimes find its message comforting. But at my aunt's funeral we were told that every human being is unique. "There just isn't anybody else in the world like you" we were told. My silly naive thoughts wandered as I thought "thank goodness there's only one Putin." But of course that's wrong. There are more evil men and women in the world than there should be. It's up to the good people of the world to stand up and be counted and that's exactly what is happening in Ukraine at the moment.
Among my emails was one from somebody who had come across my Le Paradis website. I have spoken at length about the massacre of 97 British troops in Northern France in May 1940. One of them - Bert Pooley - survived and, after the war, hunted down the German who had given the order to fire. After surviving the massacre Pooley and Bill O'Callaghan managed to shelter in a pig sty of a local farm where they were found a protected by the local French people.
The soldiers eventually surrendered to the German Wehrmacht and, due to his injuries, Bert Pooley was taken to Bethune Hospital where he was looked after by an Angel. Not literally of course. This Angel was a nursing sister and member of the French Resistance who played a huge part in Bert's repatriation.
This e-mail was from a relative of the nursing sister and it included a lengthy piece of writing written either during or after the war. This should give me a further insight into this wonderful woman and is something I am looking forward to reading.
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On a lighter note there was an amusing piece on breakfast television yesterday when a reporter came out with an amazing fact when talking about the cost of living. He was at a market and took out an orange from a tray.
"You might like to know that if you are having freshly squeezed orange juice with your breakfast this morning it will have come from one of these," he said pointing to an orange.
The cameras cut to the studio where the presenters Ben Thompson and Sally Nugent were obviously overcome by this revelation. There was a silence while they computed this new idea and probably thought "what a prat."