NOT ALWAYS WHO THEY SEEM TO BE....

Human beings are infinitely complex. Always capable of surprising us. Take Fred West for example. By all accounts the neighbours found him to be a most affable chap, always happy to be called upon to change a fuse, always ready to give handyman advice. When he was on remand even the `Appropriate Adult’ assigned to his case fell victim to his charms. Clearly no-one in the immediate neighbourhood guessed there might be bodies under Fred’s new patio…well even those living in the house maintain they didn’t have a clue and that’s taking into account that you might not altogether believe Rose! Goes to show that you can’t really know what goes on in the lives of others no matter how much you might believe you do. Fair enough I suppose because which of us really wants to be told that benign and lovely Old Aunt Agnes was perhaps not always such a sweetie and regularly took to her kids with a cricket bat or that lovely old Uncle Ken was reprimanded more than once for taking too much interest in Brownie Packs as they built their camp fires and practiced semaphore. Airbrushing away unacceptable aspects of the past is not exactly uncommon; we are all guilty of it. And it’s certainly easy to re-assure yourself that you hold the Truth. One simple way is to firmly believe what isn’t true – another way is to refuse to believe what is true. In essence it can often take considerable knowledge simply to appreciate the extent of our personal ignorance.