Positive Redundancy # 28 well-fed kids

I read a disturbing letter today in the Irish Times.

http://www.irishtimes.com/letters/  It describes a family from Tralee who haven’t enough money to feed their children, as all their dole money goes to pay their mortgage.  I re-read it twice, thinking that it must be a famine letter, or written during the Strike lock-out in Dbli in 1913.  Sadly it was a written a few days ago.

I think a lot about what I am going to write on this blog – how to keep it upbeat and funny.  How to find that silver lining.  I have a list of possible topics and a backlog of funny stories that will keep me going for the next few entries.  Never, did I think that one of them would be about being able to feed my children.

Read this letter – copied below – and I am sure, like me, you will find a new positive.  We have healthy well-fed children and in this climate, that is most definitely a positive.  A few years ago, we could never have envisioned these dire events – but we live in different times now.

Read this and ask what we can do, to stop this happening?  locally? Nationally? Personally?

Sir, – As I write this letter I am hoping that sleep can provide me with some escape from the anxiety and pain that the economic situation is wreaking on me and my family.

Until recently I have been able to meet my mortgage repayments and provide for my young children. At this juncture, seeing as the part-time work on which I depended has entirely ceased, I have found myself and my loved ones having to cope with a new torment – hunger.

Today I have had nothing to give my children only bread and cereal. My dole payment is completely servicing my mortgage and my savings have run dry on essentials. I dread what each day will bring.

The wolf that I have been keeping from the door has finally moved in. – Yours, etc,’