On the River

Cistus, flower of Guadianaland.

Fiona and I came away from that mad day indulging dreams at the London Boat Show with one item purchased - a fridge, which precisely fitted the corner where I want to install it. It was supposed to be waiting for us here at Alcoutim when we came back, but it was stranded in a depot in Vilamoura. Having been chased up, it was actually brought as far as the bridge over the little tributary here at the top of town, maybe 300m from the waterfront on the Guadiana and the office there of Fun River where I had arranged for it to be delivered.

It was last thing Friday evening and raining. I got the driver on the phone as he returned to Vilamoura; a Brit. He said he could not find the Fun River office! But it is sign-posted, the town is very small and the Guadiana on the big side…. Could he not have asked the way? ‘I don’t speak Portuguese. I’m English’!!

Ay, probably hasn’t even learnt fas favor, onde esta, obrigado…., surely the basics one should learn wherever one goes. Will this kind of Brit ever learn community building? One is so used to wincing as they give off about the Portuguese, the French, the Irish  etc. Yet the same people come and throw themselves all over these countries! And now they hold this silly referendum!

Stop the world, I want to get off! I can only see it as a matter of nostalgia for another age, of a mythic time when Britain was indeed Great, wogs began at Calais, if God wanted something done, he sent for an Englishman while one could rob the world, glory in the buccaneer spirit yet generally convince oneself one was doing the world a favour.

That attitude may be largely discredited now, but how is one to account for the fact that (according to the London Independent) in a vote in the European Parliament on 25/3/16, all the Tory (14 of them), UKIP and DUP MEPs who casted a vote on the plan to ‘crack down on corporate tax dodging’  did so against it? Presumably all in the name of British sovereignty! One might be tempted to describe it as sinister.

I am currently on a second reading of Tom Jackson’s book Darwin and the Tragedy of the ‘Origin of Species’. In it he painstakingly evokes the great man’s state of mind and the philosophical, social and political context of his thought. While celebrating his insights especially as a young man, Tom goes on to a ruthless exposee (sorry you can insert all sorts of symbols on this machine but no sign of acute accents) of the way in which his insights were conscripted as a foundation myth for the great Victorian industrial and imperial project.

I consider that we are now witnessing the last stand of those whose main project, in their world of fierce and violent competition, remains that of ensuring that they will be among the fit who survive - but it has to be said this project remains deeply entrenched and persistent. Tom hardly surprisingly could not find a publisher for his book, though it is brilliant and very apposite. He published it himself and it is available on Amazon.com.

Tom Jackson signing his book.

I quote a key passage:- ‘Every society defines its understanding of itself and its relation to the natural world in a creation myth. The Victorians had embarked on bringing about the greatest change in mankind’s relationship with nature since the agricultural revolution, perhaps indeed since the appearance of self-consciousness, and it was for that reason that they already had problems about their own received myth of creation. For the first time in human history nature was being seen not primarily as a wonder to be contemplated but as a resource to be used and exploited. Genesis was no longer of any use, in fact it was worse, it had become a skeleton at the feast, a deep source of guilt and anxiety. The problem was that Genesis did not recommend getting rich at nature’s expense but, as God did, loving the natural things he had made. Genesis was therefore now a problem, even more for Christians than for secularists, but most of all for clergymen, for almost to a man the clergy were enthusiastic supporters of the middle-class project to become rich and then richer still.’ (pp156/7)

This project, essential to the life of a place like Downside, was seriously threatened from within in the 1960s and ‘70s. With some help from Teilhard de Chardin, some of us reckoned we had the makings of a new paradigm. We were no doubt somewhat naive, and we had no great triumphs in our undertakings. The gap between one paradigm and another is dangerous territory, as Dom Luke Suart, a leading protagonist at Downside, demonstrated dramatically with his nervous collapse and suicide. The other monks involved all left the community and were scattered.

Tom Jackson is one of the survivors. Well, God’s ways are not man’s. The work has been going on in so many ways and different places and people. The world is gradually learning, although frequently in perverse and misguided ways, to be kind - to nature, to ourselves, and to each other.

Acacia blossom

Acacia trees, Fiona at Sanlucar

And by the way, this old ‘drop-out’ couple here claims to have survived without major compromise, whatever about the yacht on the Algarve and the fridge, and there are quite a few of us here in Guadianaland who would say the same! Well we have at least learned por favor, fas favor, gracias, obrigado…. And with a bit of luck the Brits will vote to stay in, and we might all get on with a more courageous and effective approach to tax-dodging, refugees, climate change!

Azure-winged magpie.