Home Comforts

Ah, home comforts. Before I get to the comforts part, just a quick ramble around homes. We British used to give them names, our houses, almost as a matter of course, even if they also had numbers. I think it's regarded as a bit pretentious these days.

The first house I ever lived in was called 'AFON'. It didn't have a number, it wasn't even properly speaking in a street. It was a thatched bungalow in a compound in a rural village in Nigeria. That was home to me until I was five. The second was called 'MERRIAL HOUSE' in Bakewell, Derbyshire. It was/is on a road (Upper Yeld) but I don't think it had a number either. That was the house my father and uncle inherited when my grandparents died and where we lived when we first came back to England. It's long since been sold on. The third was called 'STANLEY HOUSE' in Lime Tree Avenue, Peterborough. It had the number 22, but I was more pleased that it shared a name with the greats - Matthews and Mortensen - except it was probably named for the journalist/explorer/colonial Sir Henry Morton Stanley, (the one who famously met Dr Livingstone) as it was of that period. The fourth was 63 Gilbert Road, Cambridge. It also had a name, 'FAIRLIGHT', in metal letters on the wooden front gate. The individual letters slid into a fixed metal nameplate. What a shit name though! I had fun - this was several years before 'Fawlty Towers ' - unscrewing and re-arranging the letters periodically to rename the house: 'FAILRIGHT', 'FIGHTRAIL', 'AIRFLIGHT', 'FIGHTLAIR', 'HAILGRIFT' and 'GHIAFLIRT'; (there were probably other anagrams I don't recall). My parents either didn't notice or didn't mind. After that there were no more homes with names.

As to the comforts, haven't we come a long way even in our own lifetimes. (I say this with me knocking on seventy next month.) I can still just remember tin baths, oil lamps, coal fires, meat safes, outside loos, flat irons and mangles from an age before homes had refrigerators, washing machines/tumble-driers, central heating, double-glazing, electric blankets, showers, hi-fi systems, televisions, microwave ovens, home-gyms, broadband and wi-fi.

Right now home comforts in one of the richest countries in the world ought to mean a safe, warm space for everyone, with affordable heating in cold weather and plenty of good food to keep us all healthy and nourished. It's an indictment of our lopsided society that millions of Britons are not able to enjoy those basic rights - and what is a society worth if they cannot be guaranteed to the citizens as rights? 

Nearly 50% of the disposable income in the UK goes to the 'wealthiest' 20% of homes, while a mere 7% goes to the poorest 20%. In the immortal words of Liz Truss "that is a disgrace" - except she was talking about the huge amount of French cheese we import; she would never have said it about the rapidly deepening poverty trap that so many are falling into and which her incompetence only recently exacerbated. I didn't intend to become overtly political, it's just the way things are at the moment - too much FAILRIGHT and not enough FAIRLIGHT!

It's surely obvious to everyone that the upward march of scientific progress, conspicuous consumption, materialism and greater home comforts for the majority in the developed countries of the world has occurred inversely to the (rapidly declining) importance of religion for many, their abandoning the idea of a belief in a god or gods. I include myself in that number. The shame of it is that social and moral values appear to have lost much of their currency in the process. Consumerism and a materialist outlook have somehow made us generally more competitive, more self-serving and less community-minded, more concerned with things - our things - than with other people and we haven't used our greater collective wealth more fairly. It's a generalisation, I know, but its undeniably the case that our social fabric is a bit tattered right now. 

consumerism's young dream

I wonder how inevitable it was that matters would take the course they did once the march of scientific progress was underway. Maybe if the world's great religions had taken the opportunity to revise their orthodoxy in the light of developments we might be in a different place. This somewhat irreverent and tongue-in-cheek narrative poem, a work in progress, stems from that thought. See what you think.

How Refrigeration Freed Religion

A Rabbi, an Imam and a Cardinal walk into a bar

- stop me please if you've heard this one before...

actually that's not quite true. The Doxy's this new

air-conditioned diner down on the lower East side

that's the hottest spot in town, so for Friday lunch

it's bustling, but after a wait they're given a booth

and graciously greeted once seated by Miss Roxy,

she'll be their waitress today. It's the easiest hunch

to ask if they'd like the special ecumenical menus,

but they wave the suggestion away, order a round

of beers and announce that they'll have the Doxy's

three-course meal deal: seafood platter to start and

roast pork with all the trimmings as main, a carafe

of house red with that, then chocolate cheesecakes

with cream, coffees and mints to finish. Miss Roxy

hides her surprise with professional aplomb, serves

each course with deadpan charm, while wondering

quite how the clerics square their choice with Bible,

Torah or Quran. Behind the serving hatch, the chef,

sporting a Jesus of Cool T-shirt, gives the lowdown

and it all goes back to that time before refrigeration

when foods were deemed unclean if they would go

bad quickly in hot weather, seafood, meat and dairy

all forbidden for reasons of hygiene, nothing more;

and alcohol as it induced dehydration in hot climes

before the invention of air-con. So sassy Miss Roxy

smiles knowingly as she presents the check, thanks

her religious gentlemen for their very generous tips

and watches with a new respect for unorthodoxy as

a Rabbi, an Imam and a Cardinal walk out the door.

Thanks for reading. Stay cool, S ;-)

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