SHERINGHAM DIARY No 121- Life Lessons For Infants

As we were travelling home from a recent visit to Norwich I spotted a van ahead of us. It was for a painting and decorating company based in North Walsham. Further investigation found, as I suspected, that it is owned and run by a female director.  The company is called - Hard As Males.

I've taken to frequently doing a circular walk around Sheringham Park. On this day it was freezing with a cold raw wind blowing across it down coast. Encouraging me to keep up my pace, more than the usual 'moderate pace', as the fitness app dubs it. Fortunately there is the reward halfway of coffee and tea cake in the park cafe. A place where one lone female blackbird can be seen working the tables. Hopping under them the moment  humans vacate the area to scavenge crumbs.

On the way back I encountered a walk organised by the park rangers for families with young infants. Where the kids had to find toy animals hidden in the bushes. The children screamed with delight as they spotted yet another fluffy being, placed conveniently at kid height. Stuffed rabbits, foxes, bats, giraffes were tossed with great enthusiasm into a collective wheelbarrow. Though no doubt a great way to get children to interact and observe nature closer. I couldn't help but ponder on how mortified they're going to be when they discover not every wood has a fluffy pink elephant in it. Ah, there's a life lesson in everything.

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Having reached emotional states of feeling more than a bit overwhelmed and stressed, we took ourselves off for a short break in Derbyshire. Just to get away from the familiar demands of the usual stuff and surroundings. It was a relatively relaxed holiday. The worst thing in modern life is to replace one hyper busy working lifestyle with a holiday planned down to the last minute of each waking day.

We stayed in a small farm cottage near Matlock. Taking in the delights of Matlock Bath, Buxton, Bakewell and one evening we went up to the Heights of Abraham to see the light illuminations. The illuminations were really good and we thoroughly enjoyed them. I took so many photos my hands became bitterly cold and this somewhat shocked my post HA! medicated body. 

You get to the Heights via cable cars, travelling upwards slowly for ten minutes. During the day the views from these are spectacular. At night all you can see are spots of lights from houses and the A6 snaking underneath, cloaked in a 360 degree all encompassing darkness. Your sensations being so limited, as the cable cars creep upwards you are palpable aware of how much they swing and lurch like a bell. Going up and coming down was quite the most unnerving experience of not feeling entirely safe. Something I'm unlikely to want to encounter again any time soon.

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Whilst on this six day break away, there is always the gift that keeps on giving of the overheard conversation. We were leaving a fine little cafe called Butterfingers. Two middle aged women were cackling uproariously at a table by the door. As we left one of them guffawed and said :- ' what I need is a handyman' after which another round of screeching laughter ensued, with more than a hint of innuendo to it.

As we were walking through the park in Matlock one frosty morning. A young woman probably in her thirties, dressed in a fake fur pink coat, in a terrible hurry. She was having a conversation on her matchy-matchy pink phone as she scurried along. It went something like this. ( Imagine a Derbyshire accent )

" well, it's not having a dog that I object too, it's the name. She has to change the name. I mean who wants to shout 'heel Mr Juicy' in the middle of the street?"

FINISHED READING - Monsters by Claire Dederer.

There are numerous instances referenced in this book to people who infringed contemporary values, or broke semi sacred shibboleths. And we all will be aware of our own, often very mixed responses to these instances where one disapproves of or are appalled by a celebrities behaviour, whom we once loved. Falling out of rapturous love straight into despising hate.

One of the fascinating aspects of this book is that Claire Dederer doesn't just reflect and reinforce any justified rightness in the opprobrium. There is a huge amount of exploration of the nuances surrounding it, and her own very conflicted responses to any so called 'bad behaviour.' And lets be honest it is largely bad boy behaviour. Male morality and psyche, is frequently what they can or cannot get away with. With terms like 'genius' tending to give errant males a free pass to overlook gross misdemeanors.

In many ways it can seem more straightforwardly simple, not to say less emotionally fraught, to abandon ones liking for the art of a once lauded individual. But what if you really still like the paintings, music, books or films by them? She delves deep into the whole idea of 'a stain' seeping into an entire lifetime of creative work. Not even to be able to compartmentalise their work, as before or after the reprehensible event.

In our age of the online puritan, it is extraordinarily easy to just close down or cut someone out of your life, or culture. Is this response proportionate ? Can you not separate the work from the individual? Can someone make wonderful beautiful art and yet be an immoral person? Nick Cave suggests you could view artistic work as coming from a side of the individual that strives to be the best of them. The bad behaviour often representing a separate, damaged shadow in their personality.  Could we not continue to love the best of them, but not see this as endorsing the worst? 

She goes into fandom, our obsessive love of particular individuals, and what that might entail emotionally. As an extension of who we see ourselves to be, a much lauded person cannot sit easily in our catalogue of those we appreciate, if they indulged in sex with a minor. Is this self censorship needed if say the films the person makes do not reflect or promulgate their predilection? By watching their movies we are not endorsing the bad behaviour. She explores Woody Allen's output with differing conclusions, depending on what films you are looking at.

She explores later in the book, the severe way 'bad mothers' are treated, and how the artistic impulse in a woman can be thwarted or judged unfavourably on all fronts, simply by having or not having children. The moral disapproval towards women inevitably takes on a distinct character all its own. Disapproval though this may be, its rarely quite the outright wiping them off the face of history, that happens to men. Because to be honest, women are still in the mode of struggling to be even noticed artistically.There is, however, something about the fall from grace of 'great men' that is entirely do with the abuse of their position of power. It's an historically gendered power given only to men, so when this is misused public perdition descends weightily upon them.

The book tends to lose focus and edge about two thirds of the way through. But nonetheless it is a thought provoking book. It's a major dilemma of our present age, so confused and lost morally, but also in meaning. How can you hold two contradictory views, of loving the work, whilst disliking the individual?  It seriously unsettles our moral compass. But in the end is the response to expunge or 'cancel' them anything other than our attitude toward our own internal shadow side, reflected in an external cultural mirror. Where we project infamy onto famous individuals and give them a hard time about their failings. Thus morally distancing us from any behaviour we would never ever do ourselves - would we?

CARROT REVIEW  - 6/8

WATCHED - Buy Now - The Shopping Conspiracy

If any documentary could be a wake up call to us all, then this ought to be one. Explaining with stark simplicity how online marketing keeps us spending. Hiding the true environmental cost of our conspicuous consumption from us. Making us believe that these companys are leaders of environmental change, when they really are not. These false gods and charlatans infecting both our economy and politics.

We are increasingly witness to the 'greenwashing' going on. I certainly wasn't that aware quite how literally poisonous to our perceptions of what an online business it is. We have a knee jerk distrust of politics, the media and religions, but apparently not online business. These companies are the gift that keeps on benevolently giving, without ever falling into abberant sinfulness. I spend therefore I am.

As a business model they looked to the fast fashion industry to find an operational set up they could apply more widely. When once fashion used to have two design seasons a year, it now turns over pretty much monthly. Thousands upon thousands of clothes get worn but a few times and then thoughtfully recycled. But no one quite realised that recycling just meant dumping them on the coastline of a country like Ghana. Ditto the majority of things we very dutifully recycle. Recycling is being reduced to as a means of cleansing our guilt over buying so much useless stuff.

Apple employs this production model to all its electronic gadgetry. Every year your present ground breaking phone model being made obsolete by the latest one. Have you ever thought about what happens to the left over old models? Well, they are literally dumped in Thailand, where the toxicity of their internal contents can be blithely ignored.

The only true solution to our over consumption and addiction, to the planned obsolescence, would be to stop buying things we don't truly need. Perpetuating this endless desire to shop and have new things. Even if we believe we're are being conscientious consumers, we are still contributing to a whole mountain of unrecyclable rubbish that pollutes our own and other people's lands and seas.

But faced with the sly pernicious nature of these business models, I think the moment of peak consumer disillusionment feels like its still a long way off. Its still 'keep shopping for tomorrow we die.' There is something built into us that needs this 'consumerist' self view. It's like an addiction, a drug that is literally self consuming. What would people be if they were not a consumer? Would an existential void opening up, into which we might all psychologically collapse?  That and civilisation with it.

CARROT REVIEW  - 7/8

Available to stream on Netflix