Every so often – actually, not often enough – I read something which makes sense of our current situation. The attached piece by John Harris in today’s Guardian is one of them, using post-modern theory for once to illuminate rather than obfuscate: the distinction between cause and effect; the absence of any consistent morality; using messages to cause a short-term sensation rather than worrying about their long-term consequences; the pleasure in disruption; the glorification of the message not the action. At last, it makes me understand Baudrillard, as well as Dominic Cummings.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/13/tories-new-unscrupulous-politics-misinformation?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

The New York Times was a bit muted in relating the current horrendous outbreak of fires in northern California and Oregon to climate change. I note that the LA Times is much more apocalyptic in the attached very clear op-ed piece:-

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-09-12/climate-change-wildfires-california-oregon-heat?_amp=true&__twitter_impression=true

I came downstairs this morning to make a cup of tea wearing rubber gloves and discovered a very beautiful display of Romilly’s new work in the dining room in preparation for an exhibition to be held in Make in Bruton in November.

What really caught my eye was a piece of agate in the window, called The Fall because of its markings which resemble autumn leaves:-

Self-isolation has given me time to reflect on the importance of Terence Conran and how his influence has changed and developed over time. In the 1960s and 1970s, it was Habitat: food bricks, duvets and woks. There was a branch near us outside Didcot and we arranged our wedding list there in 1979. In the early 1980s, it was the Boilerhouse Project, now perhaps not as well remembered as it deserves to be – a catalyst of changing attitudes to design and modernism in the basement of the V&A, funded by the Conran Foundation. In 1989, it was the Design Museum in Butler’s Wharf – more formal, perhaps a bit less adventurous than the Boilerhouse. In the early 1990s, it was the move into restaurants – Pont de la Tour and the Blueprint Café. Always important in influencing public taste, not least Cool Britannia, which was hatched in Pont de la Tour and celebrated in Canary Wharf with catering supplied by Conran. Nor should one forget the Conran Shop. A figure of immense importance in moulding public taste, including mine.

Only a week to go.

The days stretch out, curiously shapeless, as I look out of the window at the sun and at my bicycle unused in the garden. I was due to go on a trip to Woolwich today which has had to be cancelled. I communicate with Romilly by telephone or email or by shouting outside her office window. There must be hundreds of us, if not millions, receiving daily bulletins from the test-and-trace machine telling us how much our self-isolation is valued, encouraging us to act responsibly in the collective interest. I wish this had been the message throughout. But a machine seems more easily able to state it than the Prime Minister because he does not believe in the collective interest, nor show evidence of acting responsibly.

I have been sent a link to a useful article in today’s New York Times about the terrible fires in California, following my post about them yesterday. So, the answer is that they occur as a result of human error and negligence and climate change is only one amongst a number of contributory factors. But they are still devastating to those who have to live with them and they seem, as in Australia, to be happening more often:-

https://www.nytimes.com/article/wildfires-california-oregon-washington.html?action=click&algo=bandit-all-surfaces&block=more_in_recirc&fellback=false&imp_id=340457413&impression_id=9e392ac3-f402-11ea-ac41-09d4e5655ee8&index=4&pgtype=Article&region=footer&req_id=776189977&surface=more-in-us-news

We have been following with the utmost alarm what has been happening in California – houses burnt down, forest fires close to San Francisco, photographs of fires near the national park at Point Reyes, friends on stand-by to vacate their houses: it’s beginning to look like the end of the world. No doubt climate change deniers will claim as in Australia that it’s just a normal occurrence and the way that nature renews itself, but it doesn’t look that way:-

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/10/us-west-fire-season-california-oregon-climate-action?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

It is, by my calculation, my third day of Self-isolation, since it is the third day since I discovered that I had had lunch with someone who subsequently developed Covid, but I have just received an encouraging note from a Robot telling me that I have only nine days to go. It reminded me of an item on the news yesterday that people in Care Homes are encouraged to talk to Robots, who they find friendly and helpful. Mine has given me advice as to how to lead my life, when to get up in the morning and go to bed (as normal) and that I should organise social activities with others in the house, which is particularly tricky, as I am doing everything in my power to avoid all contact with them, only making a cup of tea in the morning wearing rubber gloves.

Anyway, my life of leisure talking to robots enabled me to listen to Prime Minister’s Question Time. The Prime Minister was theatrically appalled that Keir Starmer might be in any way critical of the glories of Track and Trace, which requires a small child to travel to Inverness to get a test. Of course, he omitted to mention that the Track and Trace programme is run not by the NHS, but, without competitive tender, by Serco who have so far been paid £108M for organising drive-in tests in Inverness and other places. Its chief executive turns out to be Rupert Soames, Winston Churchill’s grandson. Nice work if you can get it.

I am re-posting the attached article in this morning’s Guardian because it is the most worrying thing that I have read in a while – so ostensibly matter-of-fact in its tone, but so much the more effective and brutal as a result, just a statement of what it feels like to be a university academic in an environment where internationalism is contracting and there is a loss of understanding of the real value of education, not just as a passport to a career:-

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/sep/08/higher-education-in-the-uk-is-morally-bankrupt-im-taking-my-family-and-my-research-millions-and-im-off