There was a Soldier
Albert Bogle
August 17, 2016
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It’s festival time in Edinburgh. There is a warm evening sun still shining. I'm sitting outside a cafe drinking coffee - people watching, before I head off to the rehearsal for the show I'm narrating called There was a soldier.
As I watch, and sip coffee I’m reflecting upon the last fifteen minutes before I stopped for coffee.
It started when I was a
bout to pass David, a man in his late 30s, though its hard to tell, especially if you live on the street. He was sitting on the ground in a doorway looking for some money to get a bed for the night.
We had an interesting conversation. He told me he was a photographer before things went wrong in his life. He lost his job and it wasn't long before he was living from hand to mouth, ending up homeless. I think it was the Joseph Roundtree Trust who recently published a survey highlighting the fact that over 30% of the working population have no savings to fall back on. Perhaps it's not so far from being homeless if you have no family support and you lose your job? Recent figures show that the number of homeless people in the UK has grown by 17% over the past year.
I thought about the show I'd soon be narrating and began to reflect upon the soldiers wh
o returned from war, many of them like David have ended up on the street. And what of the millions today who have been either killed or displaced by war? They too can be found on the streets of Syria and Turkey and throughout Europe, looking for a life, looking and praying for justice above all longing for home.
The production seeks to use music and poetry and story telling to bring to life some of the issues that faced the people of the Lothians during the First World War. If you have time take a listen to the podcast, you can hear from the directors how the production got started.
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