I have already explained that due to an accident I spend most of my day in a chair because I can only walk 80 yards, and have a damaged right arm, so it is pointless thinking of going out as I would put other people to the problem of wheeling me about. A few minutes ago I saw a beautiful swan circling over the houses, obviously looking for open water, it had probably come from a nearby reservoir. My worry was that the lake that we have in our local park, and was once upon a time providing open water, over the years has become overgrown with trees, and I wondered if the Swan would have enough open water to assure itself concerning danger and sufficient length to make one of those incredible landings, with its feet acting as brakes and the wings outstretched likewise. Swans were, in there, once.
Someone I know refers to the area that I live in as an estate. It is a pejorative term, which says more about the speaker than it does about the district. I like it because the houses may not all be individual, but the designs are sufficiently varied, and the properties maintained, so that it is a pleasure to drive through it, but what I see through my window gives me serious pause for thought. There are dozens of poor dogs of all sizes, being trailed along by their owner or walker, who in turn is carrying a little plastic bag of faeces. I recollect that this requirement was brought about because some scientist had discovered that the droppings of the animals could be injurious to humans. I had played in parks for over 60 years, and with my children and grandchildren, before this monstrous fact was discovered, and I don’t remember a single case being bruited abroad where someone had contracted the disease of this type. Now the animals and the owners are under stress, and the enjoyment and freedom of owning a dog, and seeing it bounding off across the common, is a thing of the past.
Sitting in this chair also made me look at television more closely, and while I have a recording system that allows me to skip the ads, occasionally there is a glitch and I have had to sit through the greatest load of rubbish that one could imagine being thrust down my throat. What is most noticeable since the credit crunch, as I have said previously, is that the quality of advertising per se, not necessarily the veracity of what they tell you, has gone up tremendously. But what I object to most strongly is that in nearly all the adverts there is an overall approach of spreading fear unless their product is used, and it would seem in quantities that are obscene.
The spate of mass murder by youngsters with high velocity rifles and machine pistols doesn’t surprise me. Children no longer walk to school for fear of abuse in some form. Inner cities have even less facilities for children, who are not as well cared for as in suburbia, thrown on their own devices in their spare time, leading therefore to gangs and gang warfare, as we all know, but nothing of serious consequence seems to being done about it. From what I’ve seen in recent years, parents no longer take the kids to an open space to play silly, but amusing games like French cricket, and you no longer see in my area anyway, bands of children playing scratch games of football. Take a look at the television films, a high proportion are dark, stories of criminality, and ruthless beatings, and mass shootings, where bullet holes appear in the sides of cars like acne. None of this is real life, it is just aggression for the sake of aggression, which itself has become today a substitute in so many dramas for drama. You know all this, I know all this, but instead of spending money to appear to be the nation leading the world, why in God’s name don’t we spend it on improving the life of the next generation?