On the price of hope

I, with gardening gloves on, was pottering happily before breakfast this morning. I may have managed to effectively exterminate almost every plant that has passed through my hands thus far in my life, but I hope to be a better gardener. And that, I'm realising, is the point of gardening. You hope. Hope that it will rain, or shine, or that the tiny seedling will find life and get bigger, or that the straggly-looking plant will somehow look healthier and greener in the morning. But then Radio Four intruded on my happy philosophising. They were interviewing a boy in northern Zimbabwe named Patrick. He is in his early teens, and his mother is dying of AIDS, which he is too afraid to admit to for fear of the stigma that would befall his family. He watches his friends walk off to school in the morning, and then returns to the task of being both mother and father to his younger siblings and nursing his mother, whom he needs to carry to the toilet. He'll never know what a hero he is, because he will never leave his village, except if he is forced to migrate to a city in search of food or work. And I, while I may be a struggling actress, at least can afford hope. But it really shouldn't be a commodity.