On the death of Richard Whiteley

A tiny piece of the England I love and miss is gone.

I remember a few years ago, John Major was laughed at for his misty-eyed description of the little England in his heart: village-green cricket, cream teas, the sub-post office. We are told -- generally in shrill, almost hysterical tones -- that we must embrace diversity, that it is a good thing.

Well, I suppose it is. I embrace it as much as the next man. But living here, in a place that is all diversity and no core, you cannot help feeling that somewhere in our rush to be modern, we abandoned something precious.

Perhaps I am just too old to keep up, and have become like all fogeys, looking back on the golden years (that never were, of course). No, I don't think so. I don't idealise the past. I just remember beer in a walled garden, tea in a shady courtyard, hot rolls at a pub quiz in Much Marcle, speech day at St John's, the idea -- not particularly widely held, I suppose -- that courtesy had a value. Yes, we made slaves of women -- my own mother has not had a career other than homemaking and childraising -- but we had the notion that they should be precious to us. I liked the world better when I was expected to hold the door open for ladies than I do now that I have to hold their hair out of their mouth because they have -- in pursuit of an equality that seems to demand identity (so much for diversity) -- adopted the worst of male excess, and become disgusting thugs, just like we can be.

The world changes. Yes, of course it does. (And I enjoy the new, the surprises -- sadly fewer now that creativity has become a commodity: when you mass produce any good, it loses the beauty that is possible with handcrafting.) But we do not have to like it.

We are all dust soon enough. We need not rush to make our world as arid as the graves we are headed for. I'm for the soft voice, the kind word, the gentleness of Whiteley, proof while he lived that entertainment need not be colourful to bring a dash of colour into our lives.

posted by Dr Zen @ 12:09 pm