You're never too old to rock n' roll: happy birthday James Lovelock creator of the Gaia Concept

    A couple of weeks ago I walked into the Totnes bookshop to purchase a book. I had just read John Gribbin's review of it in the July 2019 issue of Literary Review. The book was Novacene written this year by James Lovelock with Bryan Appleyard. James Lovelock is an internationally revered independent scientist who many claim has changed the way we think of Earth and our place in it. He uncovered the impact of chlorofluorocarbons on the ozone layer, and in the 1970s he introduced the concept of Gaia, the theory that the Earth is a self-regulating body.

A single organism

     Usually I write about my younger days, my teaching, residential and social work with children and families, my work in the psychotherapeutic field, or about my reading of poetry and fiction but James Lovelock's book is a scientific treatise though my reaction to it is subjective and emotional and I admire that Lovelock goes against the scientific grain when he insists science like any other endeavour is a subjective one but Novacene has been an inspiration to me and has, for the time being, diminished my desire to wallow in self pity.

    Many reading this will know about James Lovelock and his ideas. It will be clear that I've only just discovered him and them, and on reading Novacene I am captured by the originality and plausibility of Lovelock's ideas. They are all new to me, yet convincing, so clearly developed  and argued are they. He believes that in the cosmos we are alone in having intelligent life. In Novacene Lovelock predicts a future in which new beings will emerge from existing artificial intelligence systems. They will think 10,000 times faster than we do and will regard human beings in the same way as we now view plants - benign, necessary, but very slow acting organisms. These new beings will not be the cruel, violent robotic machines that want to conquer the planet as often portrayed by sci-fi writers and film-makers. They will hyper-intelligent beings as much dependent on the planet as we are. Just as we do they will need the protection of the planetary cooling system of Gaia to guard them from the increasing heat of the sun and since Gaia depends on organic life, human beings will remain partners in the project of continuing life on earth.

Novacene: the coming age

     I read these ideas from the standpoint of a 74 years old man who had a fast developing mindset that I am not - to quote from a Proclaimers song - 'worth my room on this Earth.' I have been feeling fed up about the way the world has been going, and feeling too old and 'past it' to imagine that I have even a modicum of influence left that might change what happens in my daily life in a personal or public way and now I discover James Lovelock is 100 years old today, July 26th.

    The idea of a man still writing groundbreaking books at the age of 100, lightens my weariness and gives me cause for optimism, and if I am fortunate to be spared for a few more years, there are things I can yet do - though hardly on the scale of James Lovelock - that may be of some use to myself and others. I take from Lovelock's ideas the sense that for all time we are all dependent on each other.

James Lovelock: independent scientist

    
     Yesterday I drifted into the Totnes Bookshop again and purchased Lovelock's autobiography  James Lovelock Homage to Gaia: The Life of an Independent Scientist which was first published in 2000 and has been reprinted this year.

     Last evening I was sitting in my room reading the book, with the summer evening light falling on my desk and through the open window I heard what sounded like a Jethro Tull record playing across the air. A hope came to me that there is life in this old dog yet and a desire that my new found optimism for the future will not be dashed too soon. Perhaps I'm not too old to rock n' roll or too young to die. Thank you James Lovelock.

_______________

Notes

'When Computers Rule the World' John Gribbin in Literary Review issue 477, July 2019, p10

Novacene The Coming of Age of Hyperintelligence James Lovelock with Bryan Appeyard, London, 2019

James Lovelock Homage to Gaia The Life of an Independent Scientist James Lovelock Souvenir Press, 2014, re-published 2019

James Lovelock BBC interview with Mishal Husein, 4th July, 2019. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/science-environment-48858692/james-lovelock-on-the-future-of-ai-and-climate-change 

You're Never too old to rock n' roll but you're to young to die Jethro Tull, 1975 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtwMMqRihx0

Rumours of Progress at The Bull Inn Totnes, Creative Camouflage, Seagulls and the Mystery of the Lifeless Lifts

  
   Many in Totnes are becoming excited by the progress of the re-vamping of the Bull Inn on the Rotherfold. Contractors are working feverishly to complete a comprehensive overhaul of the innards of the old building while rumours develop, as they do about everything in Totnes, concerning  the mounting costs of the renovation. Last October the town's rumour mill measured the overall costs at £300,000. By March of this year with work still seeming no nearer completion the choir of gossip put the total cost of restoration as £750,000 and this month it stands at £1,500,000, and with the new lick of paint put on the outer wall in these last few days,  it is expected that when the Bull Inn re-opens circa October, 2019 the overall cost of the project will have reached just short of a billion pounds sterling with every expectation it will go over this mark.

   Everyone is commenting on the colour of the paint now coating the tavern. In hue it is somewhere between a dark pink and a light terracotta. Some like it, some don't. General opinion is that it was chosen because it is similar to the colour of seagull poo and so evidence of the birds' effluent will not be visible. Personally speaking, I quite like it, the paint that is, not the poo. 

Creative Camouflage

By the by, there is also a story doing the rounds that the town council is meeting up with a group of influential seagulls in an attempt to request that the latter (who feed off our poorly wrapped food waste) move their nests to the bottom of the valley where an excellent tidal stretch of river - with fish in it - has been provided for them.

   Getting back to the Bull Inn, the new proprietrix is to be congratulated  on the likelihood of her business being up and running this year, a happy fate that appears an unlikely one for the lifts on the new footbridge at Totnes Railway Station. They were completed at Christmas last year and remain defunct. Rumours and gossip are needed.

Lifeless Lift at Totnes Railway Station

ps The Kingsbridge Inn in Leechwell Street at the top of the town which has been closed for over two years  is to open next April as a Hilton "Boutique" Inn . This new marque is an initiative of Hilton Hotels to create a range of small, high quality, intimate hotels.

___________

Fragments of May, 2019

Totnes, May 31st, 2019

I'm in bits. I think quite a lot of people in the United Kingdom are in bits at the moment. No need to mention the reason.

I am beginning with this bit of bitchiness :-

To paraphrase a recent letter to The Guardian

‘Dear sir,

Early June is not a good time for the Prime Minister to resign. The end of May would be better. 

Yours etc.’

I regret having persuaded myself to record the above.  I  feel for this lamentable lady as I do for those in that section of human life which is catalogued under "POLITICIANS". They believe so much in themselves - many are on the make  - yet they are hapless. They have no clue, they are useless at what they do and refuse to admit it. Look at miserable Mrs. May. She may have meant well but she did not succeed in any political role she took on. She is far from alone when you consider her colleagues past and present. Yet these were and are people who are absolutely convinced they are right and tell us so. Wouldn't it be healthier if they were to admit to their mediocrity and seek our help? It fair makes my blood boil that they think they are so much wiser than most ordinary lasses and lads. 

It's sad to see there are many who put their noses to the grindstone in the mistaken belief that the imperatives of these politicians must be followed. Thus people working for private companies as agents of government  attack poor and vulnerable people and deny them rights. Yes, our government attacks us.

More fragments:- 

 I’ve reached a stage where words won’t do to express my fury and rage. If I don’t agree with Netanyahu and the Israeli government's policies and actions I’m an anti-semite and thus a member of the Labour Party (which, proudly, I am). I’m allowed no way out of this cage. Pity the Palestinians.

We’re all warmongers yet would deny it. It’s when we’re peacemakers we like to cry it.

I’m feeling fed up of just about everything….…..and after some hours reflection on this,

I find I’m still fed up.

I once yearned for longevity 

But now I pray for brevity

Says me a man who has no facility 

for language written or oral.

I am grandiose, pompous and wordy 

At all times guilty of prolix.

LP Hartley wrote that the past was a foreign country,

and that they did things differently there.

For me it’s ditto for the present.

They do things differently here

And I’m lost in this place going nowhere.

Two women overheard in a shop in Exeter

"That’s a bright scarf"  says one.

“Yes, it wouldn’t do for me,” replies the other.

A good joke in the closing pages of Ali Smith’s novel And there for the

“What prize did the man who designed door knockers win?”

“I don’t know, what prize did he win?”

“The no bell prize”.

I hope that in June I can pull things together and get the bells ringing again.

_______________

Jackie Sharpe writes:

Song of the marginalised

Get out of my way I'm much younger, fitter, faster and more important than you. 

My son is in there and I need to see him.

You carry on fiddling with the entry numbers, I'll just knock on the door.

Get out of my way I'm coming out now.

I'm even younger and much smarter.

You're doing it all wrong. You've put the numbers in the wrong way round.

I'll do it. Get out of my way. You're so slow and stupid.

Why do you want to go in there anyway?

___________

Ian Whittingham observes:

It's the 1st of June now. The Big Day has arrived.
Hopefully tonight all will be well in the world!

You'll never walk alone!

___________

Alison Poltock comments

Ha, I see the influence of an East End Film Fest invitation earlier. Great riffing! I always love reading your blog spots - although with the state of the world at the moment, they’re struggling to find a positive spin (you need Alistair Campbell for that ; ). Good joke to end on though - much better than that old cracker classic : “why did the farmer win a Nobel prize? - because he was outstanding in his field”. Groan. 

As you can see, your blog has not cured my insomnia, which I guess is a compliment!

I’ve pretty much given up on politics and currents affairs - I barely keep a track on the news anymore as it’s always so biased and maddening. And, of course, saddening. I took a cursory glance just now and saw a headline about another mass shooting in America. As Private Frazer used to say “we’re all doomed Captain Mainwaring”.

I hope you and mum are well. Looking forward to seeing you both on Friday, and thanks for your blog post, shame we don’t all have your ruminations to read rather than Facebook. Everyone I know of all ages is on it ALL THE TIME jumping on whatever is the zeitgeist of the moment. Next time you drive past a bus stop in London, check out the queue- everyone will be on their phones, and everyone will be on Facebook. Scary. That Mark Zuckerwhatsit has a lot to answer for. 

Ok, I’m off to read an article about how Australia has just given the thumbs up to a coal mining plant larger in size than the whole of the UK. It seems that the message from Greta and the gang hasn’t reached Ozzy shores. Or maybe it has, but someone very skilled in spin doctoring has been at work......

ALISTAIR where are you at?

___________

Lucy, the celebrated dog from Kent barks

If what I hear is truly the state of your human affairs, I can only say I am grateful that I neither read nor write.

___________

A Festival of Song in Israel: a celebration of human harmony?

     What's another year? The bizarre extravaganza that is the Eurovision Song Contest is to go ahead even in the face of a widespread condemnation of the event being held this weekend in Tel Aviv.  A small minority of powerful people from the worlds of politics, finance and mainstream media have been successful in making sure this year's competition in Israel will run. They try to claim the moral high ground, (as others have tried to do with sport), by suggesting that music and musical performance are peaceful not political endeavours.  Yes, they can be peaceful ventures which bring people together in harmony and unity but on this occasion the argument does not hold.

     
    To witness that music is often politically divisive listen to the tenor of the music and lyrics of most national anthems. For instance one verse in the British National Anthem God Save the Queen contains the following lines about what should be done to Scots.

Lord grant that Marshal Wade
May by thy mighty aid
Victory bring.
May he sedition hush,
And like a torrent rush,
Rebellious Scots to crush.
God save the Queen!

    
    Nothing I have heard or read about this year's occasion persuades me that it is about harmony or unity, and justice has not been served in bestowing upon Israel the right to run this international event, an event that is always openly used by the hosting nation as a propaganda exercise from which it shapes an image of itself that it hopes will demonstrate its respectability. This could be acceptable if, in the main, the government of the hosting state treats all of its inhabitants and neighbours justly, equally and humanely.  These qualities are not evident in the actions of the government of Israel towards the Palestinian people. It is tragically ironic to watch an Israeli government adopt the kind of attitude towards the Palestinian people for which the NAZI German government of the 1930s and 1940s was rightly condemned when its treatment of Jewish people and others was unthinkably abominable. More alarming about the current situation is that the Israeli government led by Benjamin Netanyahu, appears to have the support of the USA, (so called 'Land of the Free'), under the ‘leadership' of President Trump. 
    
    Even more distressing is that in acquiescing to this cruelty we all become culpable. Is the deliberate imposing of suffering upon Palestinians a price they should be prepared to pay so that our show can go on?  Must our show go on ? Or should we "Dare To Dream" that it meets its deserved Waterloo?

I wonder if some day that you’ll say its OK

To watch a festival of song in Israel where innocents are slaughtered everyday,

Like Palestinians on a string, 
Like Palestinians on a string!

_______________

Our Italian Maundy Thursday

     My wife and I were excited at the prospect of spending this Easter week just past in Italy.  

     I didn't feel very well as I woke up on Maundy Thursday when we were due to drive up from Totnes to Bristol Airport to board a plane to Pisa where we were due to land in the early afternoon.  (I can't begin to count the times when I told people we were going to Pisa how often I was asked if I was going to straighten up the tower). In any case our final destination was not Pisa. Our younger daughter was picking us up at Pisa Airport and driving us to a hotel in Bagni di Lucca where we were booked to stay in a hotel which had a swimming pool and a spa with healing waters.

     As I said, I didn't feel too well on waking up, but recovered sufficiently for my wife and I to agree that I could drive to the airport. We arrived there without serious incident though my concentration was not as assured as it occasionally can be. When we arrived at the airport car park my wife took over the driving, not merely because she is better than me at manoeuvring our car in small spaces but also because I was exhausted. I felt increasingly physically weak and asked for a wheelchair at the check-in, something I would previously have been too proud to do. Somehow we navigated our way through security and reached the departure gate but I remained unwell.  The airport first aid team was called to offer me support. I began to lose consciousness. I had a feeling of slipping away: a state that was averted by a sudden need to vomit and defecate. Certainly there was an impetus for both to occur simultaneously, but nothing,  perhaps to the relief of everyone around, was evacuated.

     I was told that in my condition I would not be allowed to board the plane and the airport first aid team called for an NHS paramedic who appeared, it seemed to me in my dazed state, from absolutely nowhere to tend to me. His name was Tomas.  He gave me an ECG test and said that my heart beat was twice the rate it should be and my blood pressure was at a worrying level. He stayed with me.

     Our plane departed without us and though I was sad for my wife's disappointment, I am glad she elected to stay with me. I apologise for that irony for in truth I am in a fortunate position to say - whether she should do so or not -  my wife would always stay with me. She is a kind, generous woman.

     Eventually an ambulance arrived to whisk me off to Bristol Royal Infirmary where I was given a whole raft of assessment tests over the next two days. They discovered I had hypertension, arrhythmia, and a urinary infection. They also threw in some newly discovered gallstones with these too. On allowing me to leave the infirmary they prescribed me blood thinning tablets, beta blockers and an antibiotic. 

     I will always be grateful to the Bristol Airport first aid team, to Tomas, the NHS paramedic, and to the staff of Bristol Royal Infirmary who all gave me prompt, sensitive, expert and effective attention at a time when I was feeling very ill. They put me on the road to good repair. Throughout my life my experience of our NHS has invariably been good. My family and I owe a great deal to it and I think its creation was one of the great achievements of the community that was the United Kingdom.

     Just as I was to be hospitalised my wife called our daughter, who was waiting for us in Pisa,  to explain to her what had happened. We had been due not only to meet her, but later on in the week, also my son in law and my eldest grandson. They were going to show us the house they had purchased in Tuscany which they are now renovating.  Our daughter, who had booked into the same hotel as we had, said it was a very warm and special place which we would have liked. I couldn't help but think about all these events which were not now going to happen and I began to sense that my sudden illness had created disappointment for quite a few people who I loved dearly.

    Ah, well that was our Italian Maundy Thursday this year. I wish I could wash my hands of it. In the meantime I will seek absolution, in mind and spirit at least, and wash the feet of all those I disappointed by my indisposition.

_____________

From my Journal, March 28th, 1998; George Mackay Brown and other poets.

Totnes, Saturday, March 28th, 1998

     Very late last night I finished reading George Mackay Brown’s memoir, For the Islands I Sing.  The book captured me. I completed reading it in one session. It also brought to mind a memory I have of the early 1970s when I lived in Johnshaven, a fishing village on the east coast of Scotland some miles north of Montrose. One summer a young Irish carpenter came to work in the village. We met on a few occasions in the bar of the Ship Hotel which was conveniently situated next to Kirk Cottage where I lived. One evening he told me he had plied his trade on Orkney the previous summer and while there he had become acquainted with the poet, George Mackay Brown and on a number of occasions they had enjoyed a game of chess together over a pint of beer. The young carpenter clearly admired the poet, telling me Mackay Brown was a sincere and modest man, of quietly ironic humour.  

From a painting by Ian MacInnes held at the Orkney Library and  Archive, Kirkwall

     These qualities are evident in the poet’s memoir  but it is in many ways a private if not evasive record. He mentions fellow poets, such as Hugh McDiarmid and Norman McCaig but he gives little away about them. He seems a man who is more rooted to where he comes from, (and there are good reasons for this) than one who engages passionately with others.  His book brings out the timelessness of Orkney and its culture, and the grandeur of its nordic history.  The following poem though not from his memoir epitomises  for me the spirit of this book. 

Beachcomber

by George Mackay Brown

Monday I found a boot –

Rust and salt leather.
I gave it back to the sea, to dance in

Tuesday a spar of timber worth thirty bob.
Next winter
It will be a chair, a coffin, a bed.

Wednesday a half can of Swedish spirits.

I tilted my head.
The shore was cold with mermaids and angels.

Thursday I got nothing, seaweed,
A whale bone,
Wet feet and a loud cough.

Friday I held a seaman’s skull,

Sand spilling from it
The way time is told on kirkyard stones.

Saturday a barrel of sodden oranges.
A Spanish ship
Was wrecked last month at The Kame.

Sunday, for fear of the elders,

I sit on my bum.
What’s heaven? A sea chest with a thousand gold coins. 

     In For the Islands I Sing Mackay Brown also mentions that while he was struggling to become recognised as a poet, (not that he was overpowerfully determined on this), he received advice from Cecil Day Lewis. Reading this directed my thoughts back to the mid-1960s and Trent Park College where I trained to be a teacher. The English born Canadian poet, Patrick Anderson, was the principal lecturer in English Literature at the college. He introduced me and some other students to Cecil Day Lewis and John Heath Stubbs. All three encouraged me in my poetry but I later came to a view that their motives may not have been altruistic and my meagre poetic talents were not their central interest in me. Still, I suppose we should not separate life from poetry or poetry from life.

_______________

                                 

Sources

For the Islands I Sing George Mackay Brown (John Murray, 1996)

"The Beachcomber" from Fishermen with Ploughs George Mackay Brown; (Hogarth Press, 1971) 

An enigma to myself : Coventry 1959

  You see the boy on the left, that's me. Recently I found this photograph of my pal RD and me, taken in the summer of 1959. We lived on the as yet uncompleted Potters Green housing estate in Walsgrave on Sowe, Coventry.  RD and I were members of the Potter's Green Boys' Club and played for its football team. 

  This photograph was taken a few days after Peter, the man who organised and led the boys' club, told me that RD had won the club's all-round athlete's award. He said he wanted to tell me before the award ceremony because I was so competitive and would be very disappointed. He wanted to prepare me for this. Actually the disappointment was that I now imagined Peter liked RD better than me.

 Look at the photograph again and you will see that I have my socks tucked into my trousers. I had just been cycling. I had wanted a bike and though we were not poor, my parents didn't have the money to buy me the lightweight, 5 geared, drop handle Coventry Eagle racing bike I desired. My father found the old frame of a ladies bike complete with chain wheel and pedals but with no handlebars, wheels or brakes. He also found : an unsporty looking straight handlebar, wheels and brakes, and fixed the bike up for me. It may have looked makeshift but to me it was a bike and I rode it for a year or so until my parents did purchase a Coventry Eagle racer for me which, a few months later, I wrecked by crashing into the back of a milk float while I was cycling and daydreaming on my way to Foxford School.

  

   I look at that boy now sixty years on and I quietly admire him. He's looking at the camera in a shy, doubtful way as if he is just discovering that he has become an enigma to himself. He is at the start of not having absolute control over what he may have thought life held in store for him.

   He doesn't know what is lying in wait for him along the way; good experiences, bad ones; wrong directions taken yet sometimes good routes found; relationships gone wrong and relationships that were right; the ecstasy of becoming a father;  having children who achieved a little because of him but in large measure in spite of him; regrettable actions taken that caused pain for others and himself;  making lifelong friends; the joyful experience of becoming a grandparent; being part of a family and community and inevitably all those painful unresolved matters involving others that can now never be resolved.  

   

   Taking all this into account I look at the boy in the photograph and think, "You may have had no idea of the rough road you would be forced to navigate over the next 60 years but you survived. That is some kind of achievement."

  In recent times when in conversation with my friends I have played (for sympathy and for fun) the rôle of the stiff, increasingly confused agèd bloke. I'm not going to do this any more. In these last weeks, two friends, both of whom I loved, have died unexpectedly and suddenly.  Both were in their fifties. I am 73 years old. 

   My father died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 58 so I have become a more experienced human being than he, yet he is my father. Inside my head he remains older and wiser than I am. Unlike my Dad and my friends though, I am still going along the road. I'm glad of that.

________________________

Alison Poltock comments

I loved reading this, wish it was longer. I was saddened to hear about your friends' deaths, but relieved to hear that your confused old man behaviour is all an act!

Brian McAuley writes

Thanks Charles, a lot of this resonated with me.

O Mary at thy window be: It's Rabbie’s Birthday

      Today Robert Burns turns his two hundred and sixtieth year, yet for me his verse and songs still 'gleam sae fresh and fair'. Of all the great poets whose lines I've read and heard, Robert Burns is the one to whom I feel closest. He lets me into his house. That may be a conceit but it describes how he affects me.

      I marvel at his gift for satire, witheringly exercised in Holy Wullie’s Prayer. I wonder at his talent for comic gothic evidenced in rhymed tales like Tam o’ Shanter. I feel warmth and honesty from his pastoral of family life The Cotter’s Saturday Nicht. In Ode to a Mouse he lets me sit with him as he reflects on humankind’s relationship with other creatures of the natural world. I stand up straight with him at his proud sense of democracy, as he declares it in A Man's a Man for a' That.

   At different times according to my mood  different strands of Burns's work, (and I haven’t mentioned them all here), appeal to me. Today I am in thrall of his love songs and one I remember learning off by heart in about 1956 at primary school in Dundee was Mary Morison.
 I last sung this song (as best I could) on the Burns Night celebrations on January 25th, 2019, held at the Bay Horse Inn at the top of Totnes in Devon. It's a fine pub. Here are the lyrics to this song, in my view the finest of the bard's early compositions.

Mary Morison

By Robert Burns  

O Mary, at thy window be, 

         It is the wish'd, the trysted hour! 

Those smiles and glances let me see, 

         That makes the miser's treasure poor: 

How blythely wad I bide the stoure, 

         A weary slave frae sun to sun, 

Could I the rich reward secure, 

         The lovely Mary Morison. 

Yestreen when to the trembling string 

         The dance gaed thro' the lichted ha' 

To thee my fancy took its wing, 

         I sat, but neither heard nor saw: 

Tho' this was fair, and that was braw, 

         And yon the toast of a' the town, 

I sigh'd, and said amang them a', 

         "Ye are na Mary Morison." 

O Mary, canst thou wreck his peace, 

         Wha for thy sake wad gladly die? 

Or canst thou break that heart of his, 

         Whase only faut is loving thee? 

If love for love thou wilt na gie 

         At least be pity to me shown: 

A thocht ungentle canna be 

         The thocht o' Mary Morison. 

________

  

There have been many differing arrangements and performances of the song and here are two examples by Westport and by Kenneth Mackellar. Ludwig van Beethoven admired the words of the song and composed a new melody set to  Burn's lyric .

Quaintly this version of the song is included in an album of Irish songs for which Beethoven also wrote melodies.Fine as the great composer's air is, I prefer Mary Morison sung to its traditional tune of "Bide Ye Yet", a melody Burns loved. There is no indication of the identity of the composer.

George Best - a signed photie in the Artisan Bar

    One of the greatest footballers I ever saw play was George Best. He had a life of struggling but what a wondrous football player he was. On reflection I shouldn't seem so mean. He is the finest fitba' player I ever saw, and I've seen some greats, Pele, Dalglish, Baxter, Gilzean, Law, Cowie, Cooke, Charlton the younger, Caniggia and more but for all his troubles George was the "best". I last saw him in the late 60s playing for Manchester United in an evening match at Highfield Road, Coventry, when the Sky Blues (Coventry City) were still in the top league (they were called divisions in those days).

Well, (I suppose in these days I should have started the sentence with "so") over the New Year I was in the Artisan Bar on the London Road, Abbeyhill, Edinburgh and saw this signed photie of George taken during period when he played for Hibs.

    Like Van Gogh he struggled for his sanity but when we watched him play football he set us free. He also took the trouble tae leave us this photie.

Hogmanay, 2018 : I'm tired of news

    I hoped this would be a comfy recollection of 2018 reflecting on humankind's desire to be a world community. Alas, it is not so. In every direction my mind goes towards seeking harmony in the human predicament it is brought to an abrupt halt and I become apoplectic. I am rendered speechless and thoughtless and that  makes me feel worthless and weak.
    Here in the United Kingdom (?!) we are ruled by pettifogging little emperors more interested in filling their own coffers by sycophancy to the wealthy who fund the Conservative Party, than in opening our portals to desperate refugees who need the help of the sixth wealthiest country of the world. We are ruled by those who punish their own - the less well off in our country - in order to make the rich richer and of course themselves richer. Let's see Jeremy Corbyn's bank balance compared with that of any Conservative MP's and then you'll see what I mean. 
    We are citizens of a state which allows the production of armaments to kill the innocent in Yemen and Palestine and other places. You and I acquiesce to this. Why do we accept being killers?
    Why can't we celebrate being in a wider community like the EU or even better a world community? Why can't we accept that the poverty of any of our fellow kind and the cruelty meted out to the  endangered of any species on our planet is our responsibility. That we can't seem to own up to this is symptomatic of our self-interest and greed.

A global community on a torch procession, Edinburgh, 30.12.18

    I didn't mean to go off on one like this but every time I think of what has gone on in 2018 my mind explodes into highly dudgeonised and unspeakable despair. In order to articulate these feelings, I rely on the words of a gifted author. Here is Elisabeth -  the main character in Ali Smith's superb novel, Autumn, giving forth:

  "I'm tired of the news. I'm tired of the way it makes things spectacular that aren't and deals so simplistically with what's truly appalling. I'm tired of vitriol. I'm tired of anger. I'm tired of meanness. I'm tired of selfishness. I'm tired of how we are doing nothing to stop it. I'm tired of how we are encouraging it. I'm tired of the violence there is and I'm tired of the violence that's on the way, that's coming, that hasn't happened yet... I'm tired of liars. I'm tired of how those liars have let this happen. I'm tired of having to wonder whether they did it out of stupidity or on purpose. I'm tired of lying governments. I'm tired of people not caring.

   I hope, with little optimism I'm sad to say, for a better 2019.

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Reference : Autumn; Ali Smith, published by Hamish Hamilton, London 2016.
See also : https://leavingdundee.blogspot.com/2017/12/and-i-would-walk-500-miles-and-i-would.html