Shouts From Down Under

Shouts to deaf ears. Hey! I'm under here! A KFC hat on.

Sergie Ivanchuk is the man who runs tours for the Ukrainian company Solo East.

Here you can join the tour driver, Igor, for a quick seven minutes from Kiev to Pripyat, the abandoned city.



Do you know what happened here? Do you know this happened in 1986, possibly before your children were born? (If you are my age)

For that reason, you should make it your business to encourage your children, students, whoever...to be aware of this place and the effects that are still felt worldwide.

Perhaps it's a death of a thousand cuts, but I still feel all young people need to be made aware of the enormousness of this disaster, and of the mindset behind why it happened.

Because that mindset is potentially in all of us. As a collective, and given the right circumstances, the existing situation, and a tradition / history / compulsion, we could also make a decision clinging to our pride, as a result of apathy, lack of foresight, ignorance, or just plain life events out of our hands at the time.

Have you ever had to get across an emergency communication to a huge crowd of people but you can't get anybody to listen? Ever felt that panic in your mind? Ever felt like you were swimming in mud, and you the only person alive and all those around you are dead?

It's the stuff of nightmares, but sometimes as a writer, I feel we know very well what that is like, yet it is softened or we are anaesthetised that it doesn't matter. As writers we have all the time in the world to edit and get the thing right.

We panic in slow motion. That's basically what I'm trying to say.

So, let's go back to real life. Fukishima. Rewind. Long Island. Chernobyl. Oh...why not a list shall we?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_nuclear_disasters_and_radioactive_incident...

Whatever. It can't be that bad surely?

Lot's of young people are panicking in slow motion about the state of the earth. About a lot of issues that us older people, (I believe) probably think they don't even consider.

That's why I think they do things to try to escape. Things such as self harm, drugs, a culture of binge drinking, and lots more.

Sounds depressing. So, let's be writers. That's a better escape mechanism. But we still have this feeling of shouting out a warning of tsunami's approaching or some other thing, into a crowd who we struggle to get the attention; to their desolate loss.

No need for the depression or sadness. Life has more meaning than trying to warn people surely? Does this come from religious upbringings? Is that the source of nightmares that contain fruitless soundless pointless communication and lips sewn shut?

I don't know, but I do know that no one needs to be told to eat the KFC. It's gone in a flash. And the containers worn as hats.

The menu and prices at our local MacDonald's.


Sparky