Getting old is combatted in part by staying active and engaged both physically and mentally. Now women can run faster than me, the physical is represented by ambling with a camera wherever the fancy takes me. I have a target gleaned from a Chinese exercise site where they poke fun at the standard ten thousand steps a day, saying you must take into account age, infirmities etc. not discourage by thoughtless targeting. So my target is 4,000 steps a day, although once or twice month I will go to a long 10,000 step walk, spoiling the health effect by having a pub lunch at the end.
I always walk with a camera – not phone, I prefer a proper camera ‘cos I’m old, see, and I like the tools I grew up with, and that is what my cameras are, a part of my tool box. I find carrying my large cameras increasingly reserved for special walks as their weight is a stress on my back and hips I can no longer take in my stride (see what I did there – strides? Ha). So I have a couple of small cameras one which fits in a jacket pocket easily and another with a long lens that I carry in my tatty shoulder bag.
Yesterday I was ambling around town, a bit of shopping, a bit down the backstreets and then along the shore. I chat to people I pass, just say hello, like starting a conversation about Fangio with an old lady struggling in her invalid chair, asking what its 0-60 speed was, its braking distance, ‘seeing’ her and helping her find a smile to smooth her day. Walking past the church, the building site that was the church hall caught my eye again. It has been interesting because under the horrid building they demolished they found indications of previous residents including, I believe, a well.
What caught my eye today was the casual way the site evolution had turned it into a piece of accidently Symbolist art. In painting, symbolism was a fantastic and dreamlike style of the early 20th century that built on the depiction of dreams, the occult and the irrational, as opposed to representation, or an evocation of reality. Just as in poetry the rhythm of words served to express a transcendent meaning, in painting the Symbolists sought ways for colour and line to express abstract ideas. As I looked at this image I suddenly saw how the group sensibility of the builders had combined to create a profound symbolist message for today
So lets draw out the symbolic meanings I saw, which say much about the state of our culture, although first of all, kudos to the builders for their creativity.
The diagonal line shows where a staircase has been removed, hard hats hung on the pegs the stairs would have rested on. The disappeared staircase represents the disappearance of aspirations, killed by the rate at which tax removes any gains for taking risks in search of rewards and by the jealousy of success that poisons achievement. On the painted plaster remain the hand marks left by those who were trying to claw their way to higher incomes, destroyed and pulled down by politicians and the envious.
The hardhats express the hard labour needed to build a better country, under which men bend with disability long before the ever increasing pension age cuts in. Alongside is the remnants of a wooden cross, a reminder of the Christian base of our society fading into irrelevance, led by Bishops who doubt the existence God and seem unfamiliar with biblical writings. In the bucket is what appears to be a crumpled flag of St.George, a sad reminder of the decay of love of country and patriotism from a population that spends much of its time trying to escape from our decaying country – Britain generates over 90 million trips abroad every year according to ONS statistics for 2024, and a quarter of a million people emigrated.
The ‘flag’ in the bucket appears to be a thrown away cross of St. George, the English national flag,(its actually a crumpled bag of cement but the symbolism is too powerful to ignore). Its disposal seems to summarise the easy destruction of English patriotism, for so long hated by foreigners and the liberal establishment, who fear to strength of character and stubborn independence of the English which through the centuries has blocked the ambitions of tyrants and despots. Think Wat Tyler, Oliver Cromwell and even Robin Hood.
Shrouded ominously in a large black block is the materials of the future here, the black wrap representing all that is evil in our decaying civilisation. Orwell knows what is underneath.
You may say I am I reading too much into this. I walked to the sea front pondering this interpretation and then had some confirmation when I saw on the red topped post that marks the end of the sewer outfall, someone has swum out to attach a Union Flag at half mast, a symbol of mourning. Uh! Over a shit outflow. A product we get far too much of from Parliamentarians. Symbolism writ large.
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