From The Ridiculous To The Sublime

Health And Safety and Cats

Tom Mullarkey of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents ,is distancing himself from health and Safety madness today . ” It is seen as something that restricts your life rather than helping you to live fully and successfully” he says .We are almost into Alice through the looking glass territory when he commends risk in children`s play . I am of the opinion that the vast majority of therapy , for example , is actually harmful and there is some evidence to back it up but to remove a strut once its in place is a difficult business ; hence the ‘controlling’ ratchet will always tend to crank up. The playgrounds close, and children resort to the building site.That wasn`t supposed to happen..

Life is like a herd of cats and the more you shout at them the less likely they are to cooperate. Are you listening Labour droogs! Market and local solutions are the studiously positioned pot of Whiskas and soft imprecation. At least you have some chance.

Law of Unintended Consequences

At the dark place of my Dickensian employment we sell a product to keep our clients safe from Employers Liability related Prosecution . It is a web based package that costs little and obliges all employees to watch modules on ,say ,“Picking Up Paper Clips The Safe Way”, and then answer a few questions . This they can do anywhere and the system logs their progress and the employer’s requests. In effect , it passes the onus for ensuring safety back from the Employer to the employees with a little cheap tailored IT. The client has less reason than he did before to attend to his employee’s safety by purchasing a Product that concentrates on ticking the right boxes. As ever the law of unintended consequences in the one constant. Here Kitty Kitty !!!

Heath and Safety and Bonfires

In llfracocmbe Devon 3000 people turned up in 2006 to watch a big screen virtual bonfire.

Our Superintendent Parrot tried to stop the denizens of Lewes ,my marvellous new home, from throwing Bangers during their famous Bonfire Night extravaganza. He was resisted, and somewhat dis-obliged to find himself portrayed by the Commercial Square Society as a 12 foot effigy with a banger stuffed up his arse. . Mr. Parrot says he will “Take the joke in the spirit it was intended”...That is because he has no choice .Down in Lewes they are not yet accustomed to doing as they are told by any jumped up bossy boots in a uniform( expect for pleasure of course)60,000 attended this fantastic celebration of the free spirit this year. They have to pull up the Parking meters to let the marchers through...

Then There Were Adults


Health and safety is only one of the many ways in which we are prevented from Growing up. From serving suggestions..” The Haricot bean sits beautifully on grilled bread..” ..., to notices not to wear stilettos climbing across cattle grids .... The tragic middle aged still ”Clubbing “, collude in the process. How different it was when my grandfather went off to War and was one of the few to survive the Somme .( He was shot in the shoulder ) This weekend I attended a Remembrance day parade and wept listening to Nimrod played at the Cenotaph.

Kipling

In the evening we watched the rather wonderful “My Boy Jack” about Rudyard Kipling’s efforts to get his son into the war and bitter regret when his career consisted of a fifty yard dash towards getting hid face blown off. I love Rudyard Kipling and this was a magnificent drama in which Daniel Radcliff jejune moustache perfectly signalled the abrupt manhood of the day. The drama was universal in that it portrayed to collision of the Edwardian world of romantic Imperialism with the brutal reality of the trenches . Rudyard Kipling never recovered that boisterous confidence he had evinced, like so many Victorians Paradoxically his late sometimes elegiac stories are perhaps the best he ever wrote .

Paxman Gets It Wrong

It is the grinding of gears between ages that gives Wilfred Owens poetry its potent pathos. Paxman missed the point entirely by concentrating only on the 'gritty reality' . Owen`s work is docu-drama , but it is much more. Owen was not a sophisticated enough man not be immersed in the romantic poetic assumptions of his day . Swinburne , now largely forgotten was his exciting future ,the fractured visions of Ezra Pound , Elliot, Picasso and Schonberg were undreamt of.
So , still a boy in his art, he saw agonised futility but had only a language tending towards heroism and sublimity. It is this collision of form and the content that lends an unbearable poignancy to his verse. The beauty that this war shattered ,is always present .


Are we still scarred by this war and its continuation from 39 to 45? Has this experience of “Growing Up” of facing reality so horrified us that we have retreated into a permanent childhood ? Perhaps its understandable. Noone who has ever paused at a village War Memorial can fail to be moved by the last stanza of ....The Send-off

Shall they return to beatings of great bells
In wild trainloads?
A few, a few, too few for drums and yells,
May creep back, silent, to still village wells
Up half-known roads.


Life Goes On

Albert James Newman survived the Somme a comrade dragged him back from Noman`s Land in the night. He lived a troubled life in some pain until a relatively early death . He went on to have six children. His son John Newman , went on to have three children one of which is yours truly.