h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/4793983.stm
I know I've not been around here much of late. Too tired, too busy, too ill....lot's of excuses. But I felt I should comment upon this notorious case if anyone should.

I grew up about two miles from where this happened. I could normally walk it in twenty minutes at a push. Clydach is and was a very quiet little town. The biggest employer is the nickel refinery, a surprisingly nonpolluting and unobtrusive industrial concern.

My father is buried in Coed Gwilym cemetery, a beautiful little spot. I go to see him when I visit my remaining folks (a dwindling band) and we have our 'conversation'. Just down from where he rests, there is a huge stone grave. This is where the whole of the Power family are buried. Three generations snuffed out by one drunken thug. I first noticed it when I saw the birthday gifts left to the daughters, the balloons and presents festooning the graves. When I saw it I broke down. I had too much grief in me at that time anyway.

This crime has tainted a close knit and friendly community. I cannot visit that park I used to play in as a child, go and visit Dad or even go for a pint in a local pub without being reminded of this atrocious act. I had hoped that the place would move on from this, but seeing that only now in merely a legal sense are they getting any closure, it will be many years hence that this wound actually starts to heal.

One hopes that certain things one treasures such as places from one's own childhood, could remain safe and cocooned from the predations of the big bad world. But all this has shown is is that now nothing, not even our past, is ever safe or likely to remain untainted. There are vicious murderous swine everywhere, and their crimes touch all of our lives and even reach back and pollute our memories, leaving us with nothing but the here and now. At least though, the rest of us still have a future, which is more than can be said for the Power family.

Peace, Felonious. This too will pass. "Vicious and murderous" is a general description of most of history.

We are all tainted by an act like this, but as Recumbantman says its is a face we are more than willing to expose to the world.

Against that every day, in every town, ordinary people perform acts of extraordinary kindness.