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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His Dark Materialism

This is a weighty subject indeed, too big for a simple blog to do justice to. Where to start? Random musings.....Maslow's hierarchy? Religion and the rise of capitalism? The fact that 7% of the population owns 84% of the wealth? Civilisation and its discontents? Letters to Santa? Bloody hell...

Money can't buy you love, though the love of money is, reputedly, the root of all evil. It can buy well-being, security, status. But beyond that, do human beings have an 'acquisitive' gene? Why this escalating getting of possessions? Is it because we're bored? Missing some deeper satisfaction in our lives? Shoring up fragments against our ruin? Looking to challenge time and death by surrounding ourselves with totems of worth and permanence? So many questions, so few answers.

I wrote today's poem in response to the way that commerce has transformed the country's capital and its inhabitants over the time I have known it. I lived in London for many years [until it became too expensive to do so!] and have watched beautiful areas of civilised architecture and real community get bastardised or bulldozed to build more and bigger shops, stores, mega-malls. The scale is ridiculous. The need is questionable. The profit for the developers is obscene. 'Retail therapy' rules!

I've titled it simply London, partly in a nod to William Blake's own scathing poem to the city he loved...

London
Dirty city,
wet with disillusion,
you gleam through the grime
but you're rotten to the core.
Backbone of the nation,
you have cancer of the spine
and it spreads its infestation
from each market-stall to store,
down the length of every high street
to your bright satanic malls.

These scars that mar your fading glory
tell a sorry tale:
your breath of wealth is stale,
your winking
'come and buy' window-eyes
are glazed
and when our want outstrips our need
we stumble numbly
through your gaudy, soulless maze,
dazed and poisoned by our woeful greed.


Thanks for reading. Have a good week-end - enjoy some simple pleasures, S ;-)

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Gimme more ........ !

It's easy to get caught up in the acquisition of "things". In this day and age, it would appear that we are indoctrinated to consume goods at a ridiculous rate. We are told that we need that latest bit of tech, the newest issue of interior designs, the fresh off the catwalk clothes. But we don't. We don't need these things at all. We want them. Whether it is to keep up with the neighbours, or just to look good in front of our friends. Needing something and wanting something are two very different creatures!

I once attended a course, where part of it was writing down what we actually need in our lives, and what we want. Try it. Write down those things you have and then look again. Basically, we only need to have running water, warmth, a roof over our heads, clothing (not the designers or expensive brands) and a little extra to get by and buy some groceries and pay the bills. That's it more or less. The rest, well that's just comforts. Things that we want. That is where Materialism comes in. We just have to be careful that is doesn't get us in a strangle hold.


'I want' is a waste of money!:

" 'I wants' never gets!"
That's what my Mum always used to say,
"Use your 'please' and 'thank you's',
'I want' is not the way!"
But the glutton inside is stirring,
demanding more and more,
where once it was sweets and toys,
it's now stuff from the grown up stores.
More clothes, shoes and accessories,
from a shop you can't afford,
more home comforts, technology, gadgets,
leaving feelings of being bored.
We keep up with the Jones's,
not content with what we have,
but who are we really trying to impress?
You may as well flush your money down the Lav!
So, exercise self restraint,
don't give in to that urge,
think of what you really need,
simply resist the desire to splurge!


Short but sweet this week. Thanks for reading. ;-) x

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Happiness - available now in all shops

 

A short blog from me this week, as I’m in the throes of moving house – a process that concentrates the mind more than usual  about the folly of accumulating so much stuff!

Since time immemorial writers and thinkers have railed against a perception that their generation has gone beyond the pale in terms of its acquisitiveness, hedonism, skewed values and worship of Mammon to the exclusion of more spiritual pursuits. They have despaired at the shallowness and soulless materialism of their fellow human beings for believing that the route to happiness is through having possessions.

What on earth would Orwell, Ruskin, Confucius and co. make of the madness of the neo-liberals’ ordering of the world? Where an artificial ‘need’ for more and more possessions is manufactured, then the means of acquiring them is summarily withdrawn. And how did our once relatively tolerant society succumb, in such a short space of time, to the shameful scapegoating of immigrants, unemployed people and the poor generally, instead of identifying the true culprits for depressing the living standards of the majority – this ruthless government and its cronies in big business who pay poverty wages and fleece hapless citizens of exorbitant rents, food and fuel charges?

I will end with a poem written by Ian Thorpe, which is about the folly of remorselessly acquiring possessions as a means to achieving happiness.

The Aspirational

by Ian R Thorpe

May it be known
that we are what we own
Each measured by our possessions
 

After so many years
And an ocean of tears
We still haven’t learned any lessons.

In a civilisation
Driven by aspiration
to move upward in social position
Advancement of status
Is gained on the basis
Of realising material ambition

We start our accession
With the acquisition
Of a skateboard and DVD player
Progress to designer threads
Hair up in dreads
An illegal pharmacopoeia

You acquire your own gaff,
a millstone for life,
but it says you've arrived as a person
then you buy a sports hatch
and still don't spot the catch
though the burden of debt must be hurting.

Your standing will climb
When your kitchen design
Features red tiles and an AGA
And no - one will mind
you’re in organized crime
When your drink is Chablis and not lager

A picture of Mars
And a stick in a vase
A futon when you lie down to dream
A cow in a tank
An ethical bank
A therapist who tells you to scream

 

Books you never read,
A strange new - age creed
Wardrobe full of designer attire
A killer PC
A wide screen TV
All the objects of your desire

A new home in a loft
A remote Scottish croft
Or a gite in the distant Dordogne
Obsessive acquisition
To improve your position
Will inspire you upward and on

In life you acquire
Objects of desire
and the precious things all people need
These items you treasure
Because together they measure
The strength of your will to succeed.

Until you realise
all the things that you prize
have not brought you happiness
When the reckoning's done
you see that you've become,
enslaved by the things you possess

Thank you for reading.

Sheilagh

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