Log Book Therapy by Julia Jones
Setting out from Bawdsey 12.7.2016 (Bertie's photo) I was sitting on the train from London battling an absurd desire to cry. I knew that if I started the torrent would be unstoppable and my fellow passengers and I would find ourselves paddling home though a salty pool like the desperate creatures in Alice in Wonderland . My distress was amorphous and unreasonable. How to contain it? I’ve an underhand technique which I use very sparingly for Mum. She only rarely weeps, yet her mind is too often awash with fear and grief. A natural disaster, someone else’s illness, “Abide With Me” all provide her with something definite to be sad about. It turns the emotion into facts and words which, with any luck, she will soon forget. But that strategy wasn’t going to work for me on the train now leaving platform 13. Hurricane Matthew and its human devastation, the children of the Calais Jungle, bombardment of Aleppo – ? Absolutely not. In my bag was my son Bertie’s log of his Peter...