Tone

I find myself taken aback by just how upset I am at the point of the UK leaving the EU.

I am not going to say anything more (just now) as to the rights/wrongs/inadvisability/sheer stupidity of this particular turn of events – feeling it appropriate to let things take their course for now and to try to keep just the tiniest bit of an open mind as to the likelihood of the current administration actually managing to make a decent fist of things… or at least to not cock things up so badly as to render them un-fixable. I must admit, however, that on their track record thus far the portents are not propitious.

I am quite capable of keeping my sadness and gloom to myself and not burdening others with them and I reluctantly accept that a certain amount of triumphalism by those who are never going to know better is inevitable. There are some things that are, however, simply unacceptable – and this is one of them:

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/feb/02/norwich-anti-racism-protest-brexit-day-poster

I cannot begin to get my mind around the sort of thinking that would persuade a fellow member of my nation that it was in any way at all acceptable to even entertain such thoughts, let alone to try to advertise them to or to force them upon other human beings. The sort of crude exceptionalism that this represents can sadly be once again found in other parts of the western world and all such examples carry most regrettable resonances of a regime from darker and more dangerous times.

So – in the interests of keeping the tone appropriately light – I leave the gentle reader with an extract from J. M. Barrie’s ‘Peter and Wendy‘. The current UK Prime Minister in particular should have good reason for bearing its relevance in mind.

“But above all he retained the passion for good form.

Good form! However much he may have degenerated, he still knew that this is all that really matters.

From far within him he heard a creaking as of rusty portals, and through them came a stern tap-tap-tap, like hammering in the night when one cannot sleep. ‘Have you been good form to-day?’ was their eternal question.

‘Fame, fame, that glittering bauble, it is mine,’ he cried.

‘Is it quite good form to be distinguished at anything?’ the tap-tap from his school replied.

‘I am the only man whom Barbecue feared,’ he urged; ‘and Flint himself feared Barbecue.’

‘Barbecue, Flint—what house?’ came the cutting retort.

Most disquieting reflection of all, was it not bad form to think about good form?”

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“If Smee was lovable, what was it that made him so? A terrible answer suddenly presented itself: ‘Good form?’

Had the bo’sun good form without knowing it, which is the best form of all?

He remembered that you have to prove you don’t know you have it before you are eligible for Pop.”