Its the longest day in the UK, the summer solstice, when the thin gossamer between day and night is stretched to nothing and sunlight rules till 10pm GMT.
Yet despite an extended afternoon and evening of bright starshine I feel more worried and anxious on many fronts this year. There is a distinct deficit of hope in modern Britain and I feel it entering the solstice a wholly depressed and divided nation.
Not even the brave druids of Stonehenge or the overpaid boys playing for England this Midsummer have any chance of raising the mercury of my faith in the future.
Rather than the international, altruistic and heroic community that Thunderbirds predicted in the Sixties, a world in which the weak were always protected, we face a future of nationalistic, xenophobic states filled with increasingly selfish and intolerant regimes making citizens wary of foreigners and neighbouring countries.
Being a quarter Italian, a descendant of Italian artisans who moved to Northern Britain in the 1800's to provide a craftsmanship demanded by the new Captains of the Cotton industry, I find this modern neurosis and the policies and referendums its produced abhorrent.
These policies have now reached my own door and look set to remain [no irony intended].
One of my many reactions to the tsunami of social injustice sweeping Britain and the world - anger, compassion, despair and form filling - is also to regularly retreat mentally into a place in which it is always safe and full of people that were nice to each other i.e. my childhood. I tend to do this memory tourism when all the daily grind is over in the evenings.
You might think that I am living in the past or burying my head in the sands of time or any other of those cliches but I find it a pleasant distraction to think and write about those tender years of mine, which hopefully many of you can also relate to. Unlike the future, I know my past. I was there. Hence the blog.
So on this, the Northern summer solstice I will enjoy the longest evening as best I can, with one eye on an unknown future and the other on the distant glow of childhood.
I wish all MC readers a happy soulful Solstice, whether it be summer or winter where you live.
OK, rant over. Back to the toys.
Blimey Woodsy!
ReplyDeleteHeartfealt indeed.
Well, here we go then.
Like you, I feel that my childhood, the 60s and 70s, was a great time of growing equality, social development, and human endeavour, on both a British and global scale.
Working Class people were, through education, joining and/or replacing the old upper class elite, women were moving away from the home and into their own careers, black people were winning new rights, particularly in the US, and 'mankind' was forging a new optimistic frontier in space, both in the West and in the Soviet Union.
We went to a the Moon for God's sake!
It was a vision of the future I saw in various Anderson shows, but mostly in Gene Roddenbury's 'Star Trek' AND I LOVED IT.
Alas, 50 or so years on, what do we have.
A world of rolling fear, with no certainty for anyone, apart from the very wealthy , about anything !
Global insecurity, devision and conflict, fuelled by xenophobia and greed, lubricated by a culture of 'individualism' and selfishness and numbed by a media of piontless chit-chat and vaccuous celebrity.
No united world. No growing oppertunities for everyone. No proper planning or thought through decision making. No colonies on the Moon and Mars. Not even a decent bloody Jet Pack!
The only thing from Star Trek to come to fruition, the Communicator (ie mobile phones, tablets etc), reduced to a purveyor of goods, gossip (often vindictive), porn and, dare I say it, Fake News !
Sad times indeed, that lead me also to take solace in my childhood, through your excellent blog about toys.
If only more people could have not tried to grow up, maybe we'd have the future we were promised.
Or perhaps some of us should have grown up a bit more, in order to try and prevent this ?
Mish.
Love him or loathe him ( I prefer the latter) Donald Trump's idea of a United States Space Force could be bringing us one step closer to the future we imagined in our childhoods, however I think all of those near future's had to come through adversity, Gene Rodenberry's future came as a result of first contact, Gerry Anderson's had a global armed force protecting us from criminal masterminds! It's not a perfect world that we live in, but our aspirations and our respect for fellow human beings become the building blocks of a better future, even if that is just our own personal future - Mark J
DeleteLooks like we all live in Dystopian world, and 1984 was decades ago...
ReplyDeleteHere's to wishing you and your family, a happy and peaceful Solstice, Woodsy :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comments guys. Its Saturday, I'm not at work so things are looking up. Hope you all have a splendid weekend utopian or otherwise.
ReplyDeleteOkay, Okay that's quite enough of that my friend!!!!! Mentally invading my brain and telling everyone what I'm thinking (as well as just about everyone of our age and generation guys!) is verrrry naughty. Dunno who said it first but one phrase keeps running through my head lately - "the older I get the more I live in the past". I guess it's like old radio shows - the pictures were better. It's a bittersweet thing, both heartening and disheartening, to know that you guys think the same about these things as I do.
ReplyDeleteYep, its a confusing and strange world for a baby boomer getting older Mike. We've got to stick together and keep talking!
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