Peaceful Protest

I watched a news item relating the growing surge of protest outside St. Pauls Cathedral, in the heart of London, close to the Stock Exchange and financial hub of the nation. I was fascinated to see hundreds of enthusiastic protesters camped in little domed tents on the pavement. It was reminiscent of the 60's, CND marchs and the like - the good old days of protest! The same phenomenon seems to be repeated in other financial centres - in Frankfurt and New York - and in numerous other high profile centres of population in the modern global village we call our world today. The activities began in New York, Wall Street, so the media tell us, and have spread into a large scale movement of (so far) peaceful protest.

Another news item showed marchers from the North East of England, repeating the historic Jarrow to Westminster march of a bygone age, anxious to highlight the injustices of unemployment and hardship in their region, one of the hardest hit of any in these days of economic crisis.

I was both intrigued and shocked. Intrigued because for many years, it seems, the voice of protest has been dormant, if not dead. Since the heady days of the 'winter of discontent', when half the British population seemed to be united in protest at economic conditions, growing costs and dwindling pay packets, the unions have been quiet, the strikers and protesters silenced, hounded into resignation and submission through government measures and public opinion, social pressures too hard to resist.

Suddenly protest is on the increase. What's happening? As an advocate of freedom of speech and the right to protest I applaud this development. The battles won by our early trade unions and political reformers cost too much to abandon now. Are we simply seeing a ground swell of complaints and grumbling at the current public measures to recover from the economic crisis we all face or are we witnessing a movement of radicals, similar in kind to the 'flower power' radicals of the '60s, who are sick to the back teeth with materialism and 'corporate greed' and want to see a paradigm shift in the way we conduct our lives?

A part of me is shocked that protest comes in so many unwelcome forms. In the last few months it has been expressed in riots, in looting, in the form of violent and anguished demonstrations in Greece, in Portugal, in Spain... And what are we protesting against? It's all about money! Too much money in some hands, too much power in the hands of some, too little money in the hands of others and too little power to change things. The campers are protesting about capitalism and greed; the rioters and the marchers are protesting about unemployment, poverty, rising costs and a decreasing benefits safety net. Long live protest and the right to protest! When we are fighting for survival we understandably lose some of our polite veneer and our tone becomes aggressive and urgent. We have seen a lot of excessive violence and a minority of people stirring up social unrest and criminal behaviour on the pretext of economic need.

But peaceful protest is a wonderful thing and I must confess a large part of me is impressed that there are people in the world who are prepared to stand up and be counted and say 'enough is enough'. Maybe there is another way to live which can cut through all this focus on getting and spending and find some more worthy things to live our brief lives for. Corporate greed has a corporate solution.

On Location

I have always been the kind of person who falls in love - with places as well as people. To me, places have personalities. They evoke atmospheres. They get under my skin. Places are individuals, with their own peculiar characters, idiosyncracies and lovable qualities. Some places are unforgettable and they make me homesick. At a certain time of year which, in my thoughts, is connected with a particular location, a vision of that place will drift into my mind and I hear it calling to me, tempting me to return, to savour it again at just that season, when the almond blossom is out or the roses are in bloom.

On holiday I love to visit local art galleries. There are so many ways of depicting a place that you love. Local artists excel at this. Not all paintings are pictorial representations. Some artists select images or motifs from a well-known place and group them together, realistically or maybe with a dreamlike quality - a lighthouse, a clock tower, a Martello tower, a shop front or pavement cafe or a church spire. A kind of artist's shorthand, expressing the essence of that special place or favourite beauty spot in a way that is often more evocative of atmosphere and mood than can ever be captured in a detailed drawing or photographic image.

Painting 'en plein air', as they say, was all the rage once, catching that special quality of light, the sun glinting on the sea, the wind rustling the leaves. All captured on canvas, preserved for posterity. So with writing: a sense of place, a love affair - painting pictures in words. I came, I saw, I captured... and then again, much later, the best part of all: I remembered. This piece was 'shot on location'!

Use it or Lose it - the wisdom of Steve Jobs

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life." (Steve Jobs)

A few sentences arrested my attention the other day when I was half listening, half day-dreaming, in front of the BBC news programme. They were showing a clip of Steve Jobs (recently deceased co-founder of Apple) addressing a room full of students at their degree ceremony, sharing the benefits of his wisdom, learned painfully from fighting the cancer which would eventually kill him. Jobs' point seemed to be that during his serious illness he underwent a reassessment of his life that caused him to realise that much of the course of one's life can be misdirected down a hundred and one paths that do not reflect the true nature or 'calling' of the individual. Life is too short, Jobs seemed to be saying, to waste it on things that are peripheral, trivial or just out of tune with the life for which one is suited. It is important to follow the heart and to follow one's intuition, which will lead to the fulfilment of one's own real potential and individuality.

We often hear of Job's patience (long 'o') - or the 'patience of Job' if you aren't sure where to put the apostrophe! Only recently have we heard of Jobs' wisdom (short 'o' and the apostrophe after the 's'!). Following my own heart and intuition does not lead me to buy an I-pad or I-phone - I'm impressed with the creativity which produced them but am not particularly attracted to the technological world. We are not all the same. However, I am heartily in favour of the man's philosophy of life. 'Use it or lose it', I have only one life and, as Steve made clear, only a limited time span to develop it, so I am resolved, before it is too late, to live my life as creatively as possible in the hope of becoming that unique (and annoying!) individual that I am destined to be! Watch this space...!