Most people don't have basements

in Downunder. We don't need them. 

We once lived in a house with a "cellar".  The house had been built not long after the colony became a state. No doubt those building it thought they needed the cellar in the way they might have needed one wherever they had migrated from. They didn't need it.

We didn't need it either. It flooded - frequently. There were rats in the cellar too. They came from a nearby field in which the bakery horses were kept. We were not the only family with the rat problem. 

The house is still there. It is in a poor state of repair now and will probably be demolished at some point. There is enough land there to build more than one dwelling. The cellar will be filled in - and quite possibly cause problems for the people who live in the new housing.

But I have been thinking about basements and cellars and other underground places. I try not to do this because I do not like such places. I never have. I think it is probably because of the house with the cellar. My mother shut me in there more than once... in the dark. I would sit - crying - on the steps leading upstairs and wait to be allowed out. It was no good banging on the door. Mum would let me or my brother out when she was good and ready. I suppose it would now be seen as "child abuse" but people just seemed to accept such things back then.

The experience however makes me even more concerned for those in the cities, towns and villages of Ukraine. Yes, some of them do have basements in which to hide.  Some of them can head for basements in other places. They can go into the underground railway stations if they happen to live close by. 

What they can't do is go from those places in safety...in daylight. There was a small video clip on the news of a child riding a bike slowly and carefully through the ruined streets of Bucha. The bike was not being ridden with the more usual gay abandon of childhood.  There were no other children around.

I wonder what this child will remember if s/he survives.