I am reminded in these uncertain times of my old English teacher who revelled in the name Runciman Wilberforce Ackerly and had the character to match.
In his tatty graduating robes and motarboard hat he would flounce into our ancient wooden panelled classroom that smelled of long dead ink, forgotten texts & previous inmates sweat, smash whatever hardback covered book he was carrying on the teacher’s desk and in the ensuing frozen silence sweep his piercing gaze around the room of school-boy statues and bark out a line of poetry.
‘Things fall apart; the Centre cannot hold!’
His gaze would continue it’s piercing search until it settled on reluctant prey. He would then suddenly point at the subject like the accuser on judgement day.
‘You… there. Bulk is it? What did Yeats decide in the end was his following line?’
Silence would fall. The victim terrified that the burden of the question had fallen on him. The other 20 or so inmates not daring to breathe a sigh of relief at having escaped the judgement of poetry on this occassion.
Anything but the correct answer would result in a board rubber and carcinogenic levels of chalk received at maximum velocity straight to the forehead. Often blood would ensue.
This experience taught me 2 valuable lessons. The first was that only Corporal Punishment levels of education practice would force knowledge into my brain & as a result the second lesson was that I learned – and still retain – a lot of 19th & early 20th Century poetry in the vacant lumber room of my mind.
So here and now in the ‘roaring’ twenty-first Century as I survey the horrible mess the Country & its people have got themselves into, those lines drummed into me by old ‘RW’ keep rolling around in my brain as I pick up a newspaper, open a computer screen or turn on the wireless to hunt for the Test Match.
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
…And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Wise words from an Irishman who knew a thing or two about hopeless causes.
I cannot believe what is happening. It won’t sink in. Probably because no one has hit me with a board rubber lately.
In the middle of an ever worsening health crisis that has been with us now for over a year, we tear up our best trading agreements, replace them with a half-arsed ersatz model that moves all the benefits to our neighbours, nearly wreck the whole thing over a dying food industry, all in the name of creating a lot more paperwork, costs, & confusion & badging the resulting mess ‘Sovereignty’ of all things. None of which would matter I guess if Boris Bunter & the Remove had the least idea what to do with it now we have it!
It turns out the 4th Form’s ideas cupboard is bare & they are now wandering around the World & tapping up our indigenous moneybags with a suggestion box asking for policies on what to do next. The rest of the World still can’t work out if we are insane or just playing a bad joke on everyone.
I am reminded of another old mentor William William, a leery old cove who didn’t spend too much time in real World, worked in the City because his minted father got him a job there and shed the contents of the family trust fund like it was diseased. He once dragged me along to an antiques auction in his home village out in the Suffolk marshes. He bid a small King’s ransom for some sort of silver clock contraption in a spirited bidding war and seemed damned pleased with his victory when he finally won out. I asked him what it was for. He said:
I have no idea what it does, but half the people in the room seemed to want it, it looks impressive and the battle made the Victory sweet.
He put it on the mantelpiece when he got home in the ‘Great Room’, admired it for a while, ignored it after a few days & when his Children came to sell it to pay the death duties it turned out to be worthless.
Illic Vadit Brexit!
Bulk and The Devil 