Clocks go forward

That horrible day when the clocks change, one fewer hour in the day but paradoxically the day feels longer with the light lasting long past its bedtime, and the body clock struggling to adapt. To make it worse, spring was still tightly coiled; short flurries of snow were carried in on the bitterly cold wind. The weather seemed to reflect the mood.

Except for heavily armed gangs of police, the streets were largely deserted, the crackdown of the day before coupled with the cold weather saw to that. People chose to stay indoors, in the warm, away from the twin threats of police brutality and frostbite. There were a few people milling around braving the police presence, braving the weather but as Anna watched the street from her window it seemed to her that even the ‘public’ were actually police. The ‘plainclothes’ just a little too plain, a little too conspicuous.  

The whole thing stank to high heaven. A morally bankrupt government using force to maintain an authority they had lost months before.

Peaceful protest. That is what it had been, a peaceful protest. People had carried flowers and played music, they sang and danced, they brought colour and life to the grey austerity imposed by the defunct regime. But in contrast to the protesters' gaiety the police had wielded guns and threats. Not idle threats either; in a blink of an eye, what had been a carnival turned into a bloodbath. Anna had no idea what triggered it, from her vantage point high up in her building it had looked like a premeditated plan. The police went in like rampaging elephants; the protesters stood no chance. Anna didn’t know the figures but she’d seen casualties and corpses - too many to count.

The clocks had gone forward but Anna wondered if they had anything to look forward to, if the country she’d loved for 70 years had taken a giant step backwards.

There is a second part to this story, click here for that.