Thank God I am …………. *

* insert nationality here

A wet, early Saturday evening – late October – somewhere in Wales

This is a long room, either just illuminated for the night or maybe still lit by the grey diffusion through a continuous blanket of cloud. The room is not fully carpeted but has several rugs which, though once of bright colours have now faded to pastels in green and orange telling me that they have been here since this house was built. I see them being placed while the house still smells of new wood and varnish. The hall lets into this room through a centrally placed door which links us here with the front entrance from the grass and sand at the front. This door divides the room into two sections though there is nothing protruding into the room to divide it physically. It is like those triangles defined by other shapes which only exist in the mind.

To the South there is a door leading to the sandy path to the beach and near this door are an oval table and four chairs. The flat of the table top is level with the sanded and varnished window sill. This is where we eat and play cards with the radio on. There is no TV here though our father tells us that there is and it is locked away; maybe that is true or perhaps he is just tormenting us with missing episodes of shows we may be into. We sit close to the window, just a flat inch away from the rain on the window, and the sand and dune grass and the drop to the beach and then the sea pouring its own white noise into the mess of weather.

In the Northern part of the room, there are more comfortable chairs, cushioned and covered with throws again with those pastel colours. There is a bookcase at the North end, a low one with probably three shelves and a collection of books that might interest me. There is also a stamp which can be used to emboss the address of this place onto paper and we use it to mark anything short of a book. And the sound is continuous, the sea with its distant mash of breaking, unstopped since the first sea met the first wind, mixed with the high speed percussion of the rain on glass, itself modulated by the gusts of wind which goad the sea in making its sound. And we read, listen to the radio, play cards and fight, thinking behind it all that we are the luckiest people alive but never admitting that to our parents. There is no world outside this house and what we see, no person beyond those who switch the lights on and off in that distant town. I see the many little rooms, all the people moving about hitting those lights and making in one town a mess of codes and numbers, random lights across the sea.

I could play that sound in my head to help me sleep in the mess of worries that I have these days, wish to go back to listening to the sea building its power outside but now I would wonder if it was about to swell and break its boundary, flood the sand and break waves upon the windows of the house. But the house is still there despite the sea with all its power trying to take us. The house is still there despite the attempts of salt to break it down. The house is still there facing up to all our differences and threats to bring each other into hell. If your God is in charge of such desires then there is no God. Humans will fix these houses; mend the damage caused by wars made in the name of God; come prayer or no prayer.

Outside this room now, the world is wet, not as violent as that wet and stormy day but raining again, to level us all. I could sit in the window all day with a book, protected from the rain by glass and from the room by curtains. I would not be worried about anything hidden there.