In every busy street you will find an optician and a dentist. Clearly, a lot of eyes need looking at and a lot of mouths need looking in. Yet where are the people who check our hearing? We cannot even readily recall the name of these medical specialists? Can we conclude from this that the world is full of people who have no difficulty in that department? If this is so, how do we explain the fact that nobody ever listens to anybody else? If we are not all deaf, we are certainly terribly rude!

Every channel i flick through these days are showing images of the war...every conversation you have with people is about the war...I watched the fall of baghadad on CNN yesterday...I saw Iraqi people battering the statue of Saddam on CNN...I also saw an Iraqi girl shout go home americans and swearing at them on Jame-Jam...which one should we hear? which one should we believe? Is this why we are always told not to generalise?

When things change in the world, they change suddenly. The build-up may be gradual but the moment of truth comes from nowhere and establishes itself at the speed of greased-lightning. The whole thing is rather like watching a balloon being blown up to the point where it finally pops. It often seems amazing how much energy or air can be absorbed. it is like thinking, something has surely got to give soon but it doesn’t. And then, the point of no return is brief. What’s coming up for these people? Liberation! The imminent, instant end of a struggle they feared would go on forever?