Yesterday, we got back from Eseld’s christening to news of Martin, Chris and John’s remarkable cycling achievement (107 miles?!) More wow stuff. (One of the many things we’ll do with #107days is a totting up of spaces and distance covered…)

Over at Glastonbury, the #justiceforLB flag made the BBC 3 homepage and, despite the broken flag pole, continued to engage, charm and spread the campaign word. The Goodley/Lawthom clan demonstrating on the ground activism in legendary colourful brilliance.

Just to keep us firmly immersed in the cesspit that is negotiating with a state related death of a child, we also came home to more email correspondence from Sloven.

You couldn’t make it up. Post-Francis/post-Keogh/post-whatever talk ain’t reached Sloven Towers in any shape or form. More comedy (not) redaction. Page after page of black.

Bit of a stark contrast between #107days action and the knee jerk, impossibly fraught, tightly bounded responses of the various state institutions implicated in what happened to LB. ‘It wasn’t me guv’ statements of denial/non-involvement/implication tattooed on numerous foreheads, eyes firmly pinned on the floor.

Well here’s a radical thought.

Maybe take the spotlight. And own it? 

Maybe shine it on your own patch and ‘fess up to the fucking obvious? You can’t get much more bleeding obvious than LB’s preventable death [he died]. Don’t send out reams of redacted bullshite paperwork. Paperwork that causes more distress, anger, rage and despair. When, believe me, none is necessary.

Why not step off the well trodden conveyor belt of beating families into submission through relentless unnecessary actions and call a halt to ‘cover up/contain’ meetings?

Why not take the randomly colourful (and I assume more comfortable) path of talking openly about what went wrong and why (without mention of ‘lessons learnt’)? I don’t know, but imagine relevant staff from across Sloven/Oxon County Council/Clinical Commissioning Group would feel a shedload better right now if this had happened.

The flag pole broke but Team Glasto picked it up, improvised and carried on campaigning. On the ground. No black in sight. Sharing LB’s story with people who got it.

People tend to be pretty open and responsive to things that are obvious. That’s probably what underpins #107days. Nothing fancy. Just a simple recognition that a young dude had his life cut short in a completely unacceptable way. LB should be looking forward to his leaving prom night this week. Wearing the sharp suit.  His turn, at last, in the stretch limo. On the brink of adult life. A life of possibilities/opportunities stretching ahead of him.

Instead, he died. In an ignored and indifferent space. And all the redaction in the world ain’t going to make that fact disappear.