Thoughts on attending an exhibition of John Constable’s painting at the National Gallery in Washington
 
 
            One knows only too well that landscape paintings hide
            Unseen miseries, unhappiness and early death.
            Yet here’s Old England, on the cusp of change,
            Captured immortally by the painter’s brush,
            The rustic face of that more vigorous age.
            Ah, if one could just step back in time!
 
          “The sound of water escaping from mill-dams,
            The willows, old rotten planks, the slimy posts and brickwork;
            I love such things….” *
            The grey-brown River Stour, drifting lazily across the fields;
            The mauves, the purple-greys of towering Anglian skies,
            The clouds changing, fleeting and ephemeral,
            Next to which the landscape is a flat, low plain.
            The carters and the harnessed horses;
            The deep dark grey-green elms and chestnut trees,
            Touches of sunlight filtering through the foliage;
            The lock, the barking dog, the working water mill;
            Reflections in the still, untroubled waters;
            The fisherman, maybe casting for a trout,
            In the clear current, where fish could still be clearly seen.
           
            In Sussex, too, impressions of this vanished age:
            Threatening rain clouds and roughening, Channel seas;
            Simple vessels drawn up on the shore, with drying sails;
            Fishing boats anchored, captured in sepia and set in mist.
            All this in contrast to the high society, the lords and retinues
            That promenaded on the front, more concerned with being seen
            Than breathing fresh sea air and gazing at the waves.
 
            But think a little harder and the viewer can discern
            Impressions of new economies and changing times.
            Constable faithfully painted them, and maybe mourned,
            As he witnessed the passing of an age.
Among his images of age-old country scenes
Are hints of industry and  new technology,
The still new canal beside the horse and cart,
The barge beside the “modern” mill.
No, the famous haywain hadn’t long to last,
            Overtaken by the tractor and the drawn low-loader.
            Four generations on, the leaping horseman will have gone,
            And with him will have disappeared the horse,
            Except as recreation for the adolescent girl.
            The fisherman will be there, but arrive by car.
            Even the lock, the barge and loading dock,
            Big advances at that point in time,
            Have fifty years of life before the train
            Renders them redundant, rotting and forgotten.
            The villagers of Dedham will commute
            To city jobs with banks and brokers;
            Willy Lott’s cottage may become a weekend home,
            Or maybe a museum, selling prints and souvenirs.
            The Stour will become less a highway, more a drain,
            Carrying run-off and fertilizer to the polluted sea.
            Coachloads of foreign tourists will debauch
            Upon the tarmacked parking lots.
            Shutters will open (but will minds?),
            Capturing  scenes degraded by time and endless feet.
            Only the dog will still be there, bounding along the river bank,
            Still in the picture, even if the picture’s changed.
           
            As for the Brighton seafront, maybe lesser known,
            The fish have gone, and with them have the boats,
            The nets, the ropes, anchors, knots,
            The exquisite ladies strolling on the front,
            The beaux and carriages and violet sellers,
            Replaced by harassed mothers pushing walkers
 .          And older women toting Marks and Spencer’s shopping.
 
            Maybe we are better off for all this change. 
            All the same, if one could just step back in time!
 
           (Robert Hanrott, February 2007)
 
            * A quotation from Constable himself

Is meritocracy what we really want?

Theresa May has said, “I want Britain to be a place where advantage is based on merit, not privilege, where it’s your talent and hard work that matter, not where you were born, who your parents are or what your accent sounds like “.

Sounds reasonable.

And yet, in the wake of the financial crash of 2008 it became clear that meritocracy wasn’t working. Jobs had dried up, debt had soared and housing had becoming increasingly unafforadable. Both May and Trump acknowledge inequality, but prescribe meritocracy, capitalism and nationalism as the panacea. Both praise economic havens for the super-rich, the group they regard as the meritocrats.

Meritocracy used to be regarded as a term of abuse, describing an unequal state that no one would want to live in. Why offer more prizes to the already prodigiously gifted, who could look after themselves, and do? Instead, we should concentrate on helping people who do important but poorly paid jobs (teachers, for instance), spread wealth more widely and thus have a better quality of life and a happier population. This should be the Epicurean way.

Regrettably, it is the “meritocrats” who control the levers of power. Maybe over half these people have been the happy recipients of sheer luck, being born to the right parents, being in the right place at the right time. No doubt the people who run the huge tech firms are smart people, but they caught the tide, had good technical skills, but were also good “politicians”, a must in big corporations. They manipulate the party politicos, donating huge sums, ensuring low tax rates for themselves, and then broadcast misinformation that further divides the country. If they are typical of meritocrats, let’s find some people who do something for the country, not just for themselves.

Every hot dog a person eats shortens their life by 36 minutes, according to new research. Experts at the University of Michigan said that the 61 grams of processed meat in the hot dog results in 27 minutes of healthy life lost. “Then, when considering the other risk factors, like the sodium and trans fatty acids inside the hot dog – counterbalanced by the benefit of its polyunsaturated fat and fibres – we arrived at the final value of 36 minutes of healthy life lost per hot dog,” they said.

My comment: Epicurus ate sparingly and healthily. So should we.