If

 If I had died in 1988- as my sister's genealogy chum believed...

...my life would have had an aesthetically pleasing shape to it, I'd have completed my dance with organised religion- and not left too many loose ends.

The second half of my life has been very different and very much happier...

So Brave

I watched a short film about the Stansted 15 because I'd found out I know one of them.

The Stansted 15 broke into Stansted airport, accessed a runway and prevented a plane full of deportees from taking off.

This was in 2017.

The only damage they did was to a perimeter fence and the action was determinedly nonviolent. They argued the deportations were illegal and their action not only ethically correct but taken in defence of the Law.

The government thought otherwise and hit them with a terrorism charge which, if it had stuck, would have carried a sentence of life imprisonment.

A jury found for the government but the court of appeal threw the verdict out and delared there was no case to answer. This legal horrorshow went on for four years.

One of the 15, incidentally the one I know, said on the eve of the first verdict being pronounced, "I am trying to cultivate courage."