February 2007

I was reading about the polar bears today, and how we will have destroyed their habitat within our life-time. Meanwhile the oil-men are pleased because they are going to be able to drill into permafrost and run their 4x4’s for longer.

For the first time ever, I have momentarily given way to despair. I look at my geo-thermal heating system, and my eco-bulbs, and my recycling, and my half a bag of rubbish per week, and all the trees and hedging I’ve planted – not just now but over the years, and I feel like I’ve done nothing – or rather the something that I have done is nothing.

But I know I can’t think like that. No matter how little, no matter how pointless it seems it has to be done, because as well as the direct impact, there is something harder to quantify, which is a spirit of change. And that only happens when more and more of us believe that our efforts are worth the effort.

If one more person says to me ‘Ah but China… meaning so what’s the point of anything we do, I will stuff their smug, knowing despondent face in a bucket of low-fat yoghurt.

HOW WE LIVE MAKES A DIFFERENCE. If we fall victim to the ideology of apathy we go straight down into that Dante circle of Hell reserved for those ‘who wilfully live in sadness.’  The sad shake of the head, the worldly-wise shrug of the shoulders, what can we do? Answer – everything we can do, big and small, and bring up the kids to do better. There might still be time. I believe in second chances and miracles, whatever the weather, whatever the science. Oh God, give it a go. Who is to say for sure that it’s too late?

And no, I’m not being fed despair by a computer-model. Life is too human to hand it all over to the computer.

Or is it?

Are you, like me, having more and more surreal conversations with phone operatives who say things like, ‘I can’t override the computer.’ And then I say, ‘but you are a human being, and so am I…’ and they say ‘Yes but these are our systems.’ So I ask to speak to someone higher up the food-chain, and the bigger mouth finally appears, saying ‘how can I help you Madam?’ (Note: the word ‘madam’ has become the new aggressive weapon of choice) and I say, ‘I need to sort out my house insurance – your schedule says I have four bedrooms, but I don’t, I have one bedroom.’ ‘Oh but madam, your flat in London is on three floors, so we calculate two of those floors as bedrooms.’  “Perhaps you do,’ says I, ‘but it is not the case. I have one bedroom on the top floor.’ There is a long pause and a lot of tapping, like at a séance, then I am told, ‘The best we can do for you is two bedrooms.’ (I am beginning to wonder whose house this is), and I say, ‘But I have one bedroom.’

‘No, madam, a house or a flat on three floors is described as having a minimum of two bedrooms.’ ‘But I have one bedroom.’

‘Well madam, if you use the other bedroom or bedrooms as something else, that’s up to you, but they are described as bedrooms.’ I am patient, I say again, ‘They are not bedrooms. On my second floor I have a sitting room and a study and a bathroom.’

‘Like I said, Madam, you can use your bedrooms how you like…’

I thank her for this, but point out once more that these rooms are not, never have been and never shall be, bedrooms. She is getting cross with me, and asks me what exactly is my problem. I tell her that I do not have a problem, any more than I have three bedrooms, but that I do not wish to sign an insurance form with inaccurate information. ‘Well Madam, it is accurate as far as our systems are concerned.’ I tell her it is far from accurate as far as my living arrangements are concerned. Another pause, and then but she produces a guideline on her computer that tells her that all residencies MUST, she says it like that, in capital letters, MUST be described as one, two, three or four-bedroomed dwellings. I ask her, just out of interest, what happens to dwellings with more bedrooms than four, but she says that belongs to another category of insurance. So I return to my theme and ask again that she re-class my dwelling as a one-bedroom three-storey apartment over a shop.

More tapping. ‘I’ll have to refer you to our Underwriters’ she says. ‘Specialist business.’ ‘What does that mean?’ I ask. ‘More money’ she replies. ‘Why?’ I wonder.  ‘Loft-style, Open-Plan, Designer Apartments’ she reads out to me, and I have to say that a modest Georgian house built in 1780 is none of those things.’ ‘Well, it’s up to you madam,’ she says finally. ‘But what you’re telling me doesn’t appear on the computer.’  I offer to fill in the boxes the old-fashioned way, by hand, and she is genuinely shocked, rather as if I’d asked her to come cottaging with me, though I suppose cottaging is specialist business too, these days.

I give up, because in the end there are better battles to fight. I tell you though, we’re slaving ourselves to these bloody machines. I’m not a Luddite, but I want to remain a human being.

A long time ago, in 1995, in my essays, ART OBJECTS, I wondered what would happen as human beings got coarser and machines became more sensitive. I don’t know what’s happening to the machines, but the people are worrying me.

It’s everybody’s job to bring up the next generation, whether or not we have kids, and there are all sorts of ways of doing that, especially by holding and demonstrating personal values. It’s long been the Humanist project to de-couple morality from religion, and to allow a tolerant, open society, that doesn’t depend on an out-dated religious code.

So why are we failing?

And surely anyone, religious or not, can see that opening super-casinos is as stupid as the thing can get? But our Socialist Government thinks that super-casinos are fine – and if Socialism has lost its ethics, where are we going to re-find them in the non-religious community? No wonder people are turning back to the Right and back to old-time religion.

I would like to see Tony Blair, that disaster of a leader, locked in a Super-Casino with his friend the squeaking BeeGee, Robin Gibb until the end of time. But then I think that a man who gambled world political stability on winning the Iraq war with his other friend George Bush, would feel quite happy in a super-casino. Perhaps he just wants us all to experience the thrills of being a politician. All bluff and no self-restraint, and when you’re losing everything, play on!  But there is one crucial difference:  gamblers pick up their own tab eventually. If you are a politician, someone else will pay for your loses – with their money, and in Blair’s case, with their lives, the lives of our soldiers and the lives of the people of Iraq.

I am writing this on Candlemas, February 2nd. Candles lit everywhere tonight, for all our losses, all our hopes, and a better world.