True tears

On  the day:
12/06/2012 


On the way: 
Tears on the bus. Usually just an irritation. Some brat who's not learned the meaning of "No". 
Not its fault of course, when it has been taught the appropriate parental response to a tantrum is a handful of Haribo or a bag of corn starch jazzed up with  MSG and tangoed with tartrazine. 
Not this time. This mite's fingers were in the wrong place at the wrong time; when the window was snapped shut against the rain.  
The weeping is unceasing, the whimpers inconsolable, a sound to shatter hearts of cold hard stone carried in the chests of commuters who believed they had heard every kind of howl children could inflict on public transport. 
Life has delivered to  her a new betrayal - pain, true and exquisite - and her fellow travellers feel it with her. They know there are many more to come, and there must have been a few in her brief past, but in years to come it may prove to be the first that remains with her for the rest of her days. 


On the pod: 
Slow (live) - Kylie Minogue 


On the front page: 
Gay laws "to halt" church weddings (Metro)