guilt

I'm sitting here gulping as I click through my online banking record of just how much I've spent this evening. It's not that I don't love and value everyone for whom I've bought a Christmas present, not that I consider them undeserving, nor do I begrudge any of them the amount I've spent. I just feel guilty. Guilty about having the money to spend and guilty for not spending an equal amount on gifts for the destitute and starving.

I live in a neighbourhood and a community in which people who are deprived and destitute - and sometimes even starving - surround me constantly. In my experience, it is a poverty more shocking and complex than any poverty I've witnessed elsewhere in the world. People are poor not simply because they don't have enough money (if that were the case, the advent of tax credits would have transformed the area) and nor merely because they smoke or procreate too much (if that were the case, the local health centre offering smoking cessation and family planning would be busy) but for many, many reasons.

People are poor because they're being threatened by Provvie loan sharks who bullied them in 900% APR loans to buy presents for the children they had before they even had the chance to consider the idea that the could finish school which was before they were on the drink but when he was already beating us black and blue and when you feel like that you need a flat screen plasma telly on hire purchase, even though you live eight of you in a one-bed flat and you've got rising damp on the second floor and you can't always afford to put money on the electric and even though Miss did teach us at school it's cheaper to pay the electric by direct debit you're araid to even try to get a bank account whe you're in debt like this cos they'll look at you funny in the bank cos they'll know which part of town you're from and anyway Mum lived here like this, and Gran and Great Grandma too so when you live here nothing changes.

That was a long and incoherent sentence, I'm aware. Being born into this community must feel, I imagine, a somewhat similar sentence.

The community centre around the corner from me is asking for contributions of shampoo, safety razors (safetyonlyplease), warm socks and nail varnish to distribute. Next time I'm out shopping, I'll pop into Superdrug.