pumpkinstrokemarrow

Most of what I heard was very dull. Some of it was very badly delivered. Some of it was read, verbatim, from scripts. Some of was delivered by a former statesmen, now in retirement but perhaps doing his bit to try and show beginners how it should be done. Perhaps trying to recapture his glory days. But I am not sure that there is all that much interest outside of the whips' offices in the training of MPs. Perhaps the point is that all proceedings are broadcast, with the lightest of editorial touches. We get to see what our governors get up to; which would be so much more worthy if our governors did much governing these days. I don't suppose that the people who actually make up our policy on Afghanistan even bothered to read the transcript, never mind attend in person.

And then today I participated in a democratic event of a different sort, at least I almost participated. I was at breakfast when FIL rushed into the kitchen to announce that the PM was going to make an announcement at 0930 sharp. So I trotted into the sitting room and fired up the appropriate channel (under direction from the BH). Had the PM decided to nationalise the News of the World, that fearless exposer of scandal at, for example, the Ely Hospital in Bristol, rather than see it sink? We sat and waited while some talking head extemporised, doing quite a good job of it as it happened. At 0938 I decided to resume breakfast. Some minutes later I was summoned to find the man in full flood. Doing an excellent imitation of Blair looking solemn and serious while remaining a man of & for the people. I lasted a couple of minutes before breakfast was resumed.

Now while it is a bit poor that journalists see fit to nose around in peoples' mobile phones, it is slightly odd that the media work themselves up into such a frenzy over this unacceptable tip of an otherwise acceptable iceberg. Journalists have poked around in bins for ever. They have used fancy cameras outside (or over) peoples' houses for a long time. And there are lots of people who like to read the product over their eggy soldiers. All kinds of people are authorised to tap our phones and tap our email now and into the foreseeable future. There are cameras everywhere. Not to mention the ones at airports which provide the operators with a low grade peep show.

And then there are all those people who like to share their intimate details in the course of conversations with their mobiles on crowded trains. The lots of people who go to a lot of trouble to get their affairs into the media. The some people who are prepared to hang up all kinds of dirty washing in no more than the hope that they will get their 10 minutes in the sun.

Perhaps all this frenzy reflects our unease, our collective guilt.

On the supposition that the media frenzy actually reflects some feelings in the population at large, one goes onto the thought that the great British public needs an emotional bath of this sort from time to time. A bath which is usually triggered by a tragic death or a missing person. I suppose the present bath is at least about tragedy at one remove. What A. Huxley fingered nearly 100 years ago as a violent passion surrogate (see http://www.huxley.net/bnw/seventeen.html), in his story something to be administered by injection rather than by transmission. In his defence we can say that radio was fairly new at the time and television had hardly been thought of.

PS: there is good news too. The jelly lichen on the patio has pushed up after the recent heavy rain. Must lurk dormant underground, ready to spring into visible life when circumstances permit.