Tuesday, February 03, 2009
Snow Latest 2: The Escape from Individualism
Having strapped on my water-powered jet pack, I made a quick survey of snowed-in Britain. I came to a startling conclusion - snow can save us from ourselves. Consider this from Stuart Jeffries - a paradisal scene of benevolent bobbies in snowball fights with jolly schoolchildren straight out of E.Nesbit's Complete History of the Bastable family, the book that influenced me more than any other. And then consider this - our children are eaten up with malevolent individualism. The conclusion is inescapable. We need more snow, much more. We must build Jerusalem in England's white and pleasant land.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
someone mentioned on the Today programme just now, The Campaign for Real Winters... It's team building! I remember as a kid we'd see how big a snowball we could roll, the bigger it got, the more hands needed to push it.
ReplyDeleteI cringed at this obligatory Guardian Agnostic-Bus nod in the Stuart Jeffries piece:
ReplyDeleteThe heath was like Narnia (though with none of CS Lewis's unwonted Christian allegorising).
Quite right, the last thing we'd want on our idyllic wintry stroll is some arse coming along and spoiling it all by shoving some unwonted Christian allegorising in our frosted faces.
I mean there's nothing worse, is there? You're walking along, minding your own business and enjoying Being Here Now and the Glorious Wonder of the Godless Universe... when all of a sudden, BANG! Bloody unwonted Christian allegorising everywhere!
ReplyDeleteJust yesterday I was trying to imagine the wondrous majesty of the ancient stars as I went to buy a pint of milk, but a group of hoodies outside the corner shop ruined the whole thing by acting out a completely unnecessary reenactment of Jesus's anguish in Gethsemane. Tossers.
Is malevolent individualism not a tautology?
ReplyDeleteSurely it is the working out of the great Anglo-Saxon, Pelagian experiment that started with the Reformation, went through the foundation of America and is now running into the sand as its people sink into senility and decrepitude.
Ah, when did the weather become drop-everything headline news? It says...'closed financial institutions...cost the country billions...' er, given current performance, I'd have thought we'd actually save money if that lot froze to death in their lofts over the next 48 hours.
ReplyDeleteVery good. As I am wont, like Smeagol, to burrow through ice and snow trying to sniff out the root of things, I wonder about Nesbit as key inspiration to Lewis, from his own childhood. Snow standing then for teamwork over the generations? The plot of course needs those stuck-up children at the Guardian to be taught a lesson by the end. Whether they really care to be allegorised may not come into it, once a white witch is on the loose.
ReplyDeletephilip: I won't hear a bad word against Pelagius, English hero and part of a Celtic church that knew so much about true community before Rome came back over to assert its right to rule. (Also because I've heard so many bad words before that use his name for all the wrong reasons.) The Reformation of course rejected Pelagius in favour of Augustine of Hippo. More's the pity. Tragic cases like Cowper, who did away with himself, tormented by of Augustine and Calvin's double predestination, would surely have escaped that hellish isolation through the sensible, scholarly English saint.
ReplyDeleteYou have a point of course about the current Anglo-Saxon predicament. But might it not be better attributed to failing to recognise one of our earliest prophets, part of a power-rejecting community that put most of its successors to shame?
The thing about snow of course is that eventually it melts, as do the Guardians words.
ReplyDeleteHate to poke holes in your conclusion Bryan but snow = Jerusalem. Reykjavik =
Another happy snowday to all.
ReplyDeleteI am looking out on the hope valley sitting on my deck, drinking a glass of red and a snacking on a paella, and I can tell you, this is as good as any summer day.
A Valley Called Hope. It's a novel, then a movie, then a TV series - at least.
ReplyDeleteI have become so discouraged by the rampant malevolent individualism in modern society that I have concluded everybody else can go straight to hell.
ReplyDeleteYes Bryan, I suggest you and your stable mate and our occasional near local Matthew Parris can collaborate.
ReplyDeleteThats of course conditional of Matthew taking time off from decapitating cyclists spoiling his cosy unlittered weekends?
I'm firmly with Stuart Jeffries. Just for one day, London seemed so much more human - and much nicer to look at.
ReplyDeleteThat said, maybe I was in a good mood because I had just completed a trouble-free journey by public transport from South Wales to Kensington. But hey, no-one in the media is going to report that, are they?