What I have been reading - The Lion and the Unicorn - George Orwell's essay this morning.
Audible had highlighted it in subscription, only being an essay you only had to pay a couple of pounds or one credit, well considering I pay £7.99 a month for a credit, I hunted it up on the web.
"England is not the jewelled isle of Shakespeare’s much-quoted passage, nor is it the inferno depicted by Dr Goebbels. More than either it resembles a family, a rather stuffy Victorian family, with not many black sheep in it but with all its cupboards bursting with skeletons. It has rich relations who have to be kow-towed to and poor relations who are horribly sat upon, and there is a deep conspiracy of silence about the source of the family income. It is a family in which the young are generally thwarted and most of the power is in the hands of irresponsible uncles and bedridden aunts. Still, it is a family. It has its private language and its common memories, and at the approach of an enemy it closes its ranks. A family with the wrong members in control – that, perhaps, is as near as one can come to describing England in a phrase."
Do his words ring true? Yes even today. The media rampaging through Omicron, Prince Andrew and now this tennis player in Australia, it becomes like a record stuck on the needle going round and round.
The only thing that made me cry this week was Jim Shannon as he broke down in parliament describing the lonely death of his mother-in-law. I now listen every day to the mantra wait till Sue Gray report comes out, as if somehow this will make everything right - for God's sake!!
Brian Bilston even wrote a poem about it yesterday......
I was thinking of asking Sue Gray to write my blogs posts until I realised they would be even more infrequent than they already are.
ReplyDeleteShe has a helluva of a burden to carry and I don't think she can be judge either. The whole business will drift on adnauseam.
DeleteI wonder what she can tell us which we do not already know. Maybe Boris could be taught to recognise a party and tell it apart from a business meeting to which you are instructed to bring your own booze?
ReplyDeleteIt is like putting off the evil day as far as the Conservatives are concerned. She will be factual of course but will Johnson step down on findings, I expect not, he has already convinced himself that he is in the right.
DeleteI've read a lot of Orwell, but not that essay. I am going to seek it out to read.
ReplyDeleteThe link is in the opening sentence Anne 'what I have been reading'
DeleteI bet Boris is wishing he'd given Sue Gray more than a box of Chocs this Christmas!
ReplyDeleteYour brain is more stimulated than mine. I have relied to scenery to get the grey cells happier and the legs feeling more energetic as I walked up the hill in search of the best views.
Trying to get into the new Diana Gabaldon, but too many distractions and I've not woken up in the night for ages, and that is when I often read downstairs to get back to sleep.
She is in his employment though;) You had a lovely walk the other day Jennie, count your blessings for living in such a beautifil place.
ReplyDelete