The Indifference Engine

  I was born in an age of pomp and circumstance, when Empire was still a living memory. The image of Our Gracious Queen gazed serenely on her subjects from every official wall, and her viceregal representatives added a sense of occasion to all the stone-layings, tree-plantings, openings and addresses that she couldn’t appear at herself. Foremost and most adoring of her subjects was the Prime Minister. The first PM to impose himself on my infant consciousness was Robert Gordon Menzies, who loomed above it all with magisterial eyebrows bristling. For all his drumming up fear of Communist bogey-men, his arrogance and pomposity, Menzies was a picture of something that has disappeared from contemporary politics: dignity. Dignity, arguably an essential quality for any aspiring statesman, existed to wildly varying degrees in Menzies’ successors. Harold Holt was an urbane bed-hopper who grovelled to President Lyndon Johnson, but he mustered it when he needed to. So could the man who ...

The past has a horrible habit of catching up with you…. and fair enough if you’ve got crimes or deplorable behaviour to answer for. Sometimes, if you’re wired that way, gangs of less heinous former embarrassments and awkwardnesses sneak into the mind. Like small, snivelling distant relatives of the Classical Furies, they often ply their trade in the small hours of the morning. Sadly, the Furies don’t do much in the way of relentless pursuit these days. Hellhounds don’t dog many heels. We’ve got the toxic banality of 70’s pop/rock instead. Any day touched by its rank tendrils is not a good day. As far as I can tell, I’ve violated no tombs, offended no gods, desecrated no shrines. I can’t identify a single action that would merit what happened. There was no warning, no trigger, no fragment of a tune from a passing vehicle. Nothing. For no reason at all, I found myself thinking of a song by The Captain and Tennille. Hearing it would have been bad enough. Having it come to mind unbid...

I’ve been thinking about razors a lot lately. Not the hair management sort, but rather the metaphorical variety; the principles that cut away the unnecessary in trying to reach understanding. Occam’s razor states "the simplest solution is most likely the right one" and Hanlon’s razor says "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity". I think they need to be stropped up and applied now more than ever before. I have seen people I know succumb to a frightening malaise, and it isn’t covid 19. It’s the bizarre ideas that arise from the baroque intertwining of strands of conspiracy theory. I know otherwise rational, intelligent people who appear to believe that the virus has something to do with 5G, and/or that it’s part of a plan by Bill Gates to implant mind-control chips via vaccines. They point to the “heroes” who dare to speak the truth about the “fake” virus, linking to endless YouTube clips, all of which are about as scientifica...

The final installment of the series... SINGULAR PLEASURES 6 The 1997 Caravan and Camping Exposition It is curious just how persistently an outdated ethos can linger. In the latter part of the 19th century, the Romantic conception of Nature as a state of mythical innocence, where we might draw spiritual nourishment from the evidence of God's handiwork, was supplanted by an imperialistic ethos. The untamed wilderness was something to be conquered and exploited, and it is this increasingly archaic vision that informs the 1997 Caravan and Camping Exposition. Barbarously contracted to "Campex 97", it carries echoes of the Great Exhibitions of the Victorian era, further entrenching its implicit industrial expansionist sensibility. How are we to view a construction like the Mallard "Rolling Thunder" 6-berth air-conditioned Mobile Townhouse with internal bathroomette, satellite dish and self-erecting annexe? What subtext does it reveal? The answers must...

I stumbled on a printout of this the other day, and I'm just throwing it out there for the hell of it. GUIDANCE Normally, he would have welcomed any interruption to the daily routine, but instead there was dull, hot resentment. It was what he felt whenever a stranger gave him that fake, “I’m-your-friend-and-I-really-have-your-best-interests-at-heart” smile. He hated the way things were engineered, the implication that what was about to happen was somehow special and could affect the rest of his life. Terry had been in before him, and had whispered what to expect. “He told me I should think about optometry or watchmaking. Why?” When his name was called, he was ready. He opened the door to the storeroom that had been pressed into service for the occasion, and couldn’t help thinking “if this is so important, why is it happening next to the spare chalk?” It was as just as he pictured it. The fake smile, the insincere handshake... There was a name, which he igno...