HENCE THE THREAT TO PIGEONS' LAVATORIES.
IN A WORLD OF RETRIBUTION SEEKERS.
NOW IT'S STATUES. Throughout my boyhood, and certainly until we moved over here, there was a statue of Queen Victoria in the Guildhall Square, Portsmouth. I never gave it much thought. I'm not a royalist, but I'd rather have them in our palaces than a load of bloody politicians: then again, I'd rather have affordable homes for young people than a load of bloody palaces. I'm no great supporter of privilege: but I can't stop it.
Anyway, I believe the Queen Vic statue is still there, though I gather it is currently under threat from today's militia of aggrieved zealots who, seeking abject apology for our past misdeeds, are threatening to remove all reminders of sins such as slavery from the world they feel it should now be. Some task.
Not to be left out of any possibility of a ruckus, hordes of moronic football hooligans, bored without opposition supporters to kick into A & E, are determined to “protect our heritage” from those would-be erasers of the more unlaudable events in our history. Oh dear oh dear.
When I was working for the - long defunct - Portsmouth Executive Council (NHS) back in the sixties a senior colleague, shooing the pigeons off his office windowsill for the umpteenth time, remarked to me: “Look at 'em, the useless articles. Good for nothing but fornicating, and defecating.”
I grinned and said: “Old Queen Victoria probably sent them here.” The royal statue was just a few hundred yards away. ”Maybe they'll go cooing back there now and crap on her.”
He liked the sound of that. “Good,” he said. “Serve her bloody right.”
And that was that.
The respected art historian Sir Simon Schama (he of the most gloriously unkempt bookcase in the UK) thinks statues should be relocated to museums. An interesting viewpoint. It would cost a lot of money, but it could save a lot of angst. When you think about it, though, there would not be that much sense in such an evacuation. Most statues are just lavatories for pigeons. The majority of us spend our lives strolling past them without a second glance: they are ignored stone effigies of royals and so-called national heroes left there for the pigeons to shit on. Public toilets have been closed to humans for several months now; don't let's begrudge our feathered friends their simple relief. Leave their loos alone. The retribution seekers will eventually find something else for which to seek retribution. If there's a second pandemic it'll probably be that.
I STILL DO NOT SUBSCRIBE to Twitter, and seldom open my Facebook account. Am extremely wary of social discourse.
J.K. Rowling's recent experience of social media backlash (if you're one of her fans, or a determined detractor, you'll know more about it than I do) has done nothing to allay my cautious outlook on expressing honest opinion nowadays.
This much I do know: if I had been a child actor blessed with wealth and fame by the magical talent of a world famous author and, when I grew up, that author had somehow said or written something with which I had misgivings, I would have waited until I next met her to make my doubts known and seek further enlightenment.
Publicly I would have kept my big trap shut.
All for now.
Keep your distance, it ain't over yet!
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