Amidst the various commitments I have today – coaching calls, project calls – I am expecting a visit this afternoon from PC Jane Kilduff of Lewisham Police.

Jane called me last week to follow up the photos I submitted following the riots on 8th August last year.  She wanted to get some details from me in order to prepare a statement which I shall sign today.  After her call I sat down and read the posting I wrote at the time, entitled There were riots outside my front door today.  I realise that the notes I captured in that posting are, perhaps, a useful addition to anything I could say now, offering testimony written so soon after the fact.  I also realise that none of the sentiments I expressed at the time have changed.

In our call, Jane asks me questions about what happened that day and I notice something happening as our call proceeds, a rising of emotion that I didn’t feel at the time of the riots because – I knew it even then – I was in shock.  When I put the phone down I sit for a few moments with the emotions – not fear, not anger, but grief, sorrow…

As I write I am aware of the way the work of Elizabeth Kuebler Ross has been used in businesses to describe our natural responses to change in the workplace.  My own response is part of the same cycle.  In this moment, though, I simply write in the awareness that something happened last August which changed my world and which stimulates some sense of loss in me.  I can seek to rationalise that – to understand what it is that I feel so sad about and still, I can only approximate.  I decide not to rationalise in this way and take a moment to sit with the emotions.