London
is still a-whirl, and in towns there's still a din, though no dust,
no steam. Our air polluted now with particles you cannot see. Our
streets have roads, not dust tracks, which cars share with bicycles
and not horse-drawn carts. Nothing is powered by steam. Very little
is powered by man. And there are no mills, of the sort that once
existed. Mills that grind and whirr and belch smoke and need many
hands of different sizes. Banking too has changed since Kenneth's
day. Computers and e-commerce happened.
The
money-man today is different to yesterday's money-man. Still suited,
still booted, but the bowler hat is extinct and the briefcase is
rare. Has a briefcase ever contained important papers? And not
instead the workings of a novel or some illustrations, or a comic to
read in moments of boredom? For working in banking, all day, every
day, I imagine, must have more of these moments than most other jobs,
as well as more opportunity to break the monotony of figures. But
then perhaps those opportunities are less, and the profession, if
it's entered, is entered from choice rather than push and family
ties. Money drove life back then and it drives life now. The lack of
it, the want of it, the needing more.
There's
toilers, there's idlers. There's people trying to both toil and idle,
to have security in their lives as well as creativity. People are
fundamentally the same, it's the world that's changed. People changed
the world but failed, in their heads and hearts, to change with it.
There's
dirt and din and vapour. There's hurry and frayed tempers. There's
undisguised rage. There's a tidal motion to go with or battle
against. Ants on the march. Up and down and cross the country. Ants
in the skies. Flying towards home or away. The ants from above look
down on toy houses; the ants below look up at toy planes.
Where
are they going? Is it business or pleasure?
Are
they going to visit their factories in China? Their sweatshops in
Bangladesh? Management ant people visiting ant workers in another
great whirling city, in the dust and din of another town. Perhaps
they are holidaying ants who won't when they get there experience the
country they're visiting; they'll stay in their resorts and tip the
uniformed ants scurrying around them. Their money, they tell
themselves, is boosting the economy, and so they disrespect their
host's culture and expect to be served the food they're used to. They
see nothing of the dust and din, only the surface calm. Only the pool
rippled by swimmers, who swim up and down, up and down and then
lounge in a deckchair for the rest of the day. The great mill, almost
within their ken, just outside it they evade.
What
might they find anyway? Isn't rush and bustle all the same?
Wouldn't
there be the same purposeful walks? The same stop-start shuffle? It
all depends. On what? On progress, my friend.
The
progress which gives us efficiency and distractions. Amusements which
don't broaden the mind, but shrink it. That take us one step closer
to an adult-friendly Disneyland. That gives us profit without (or
less) individual productivity. That gives us time to kill brain
cells. And each other.
Others,
though, will still be ants. Worker ants. Who decides? The banks? The
economists? The leaders of nations? The CEOs?
Who
decides which cities, towns should arise to the sound of music? To
the sound of a brass band proclaiming cheap labour, cheap labour.
The
soldier ants assemble to defend it in their racing green or fire
engine red tunics with gold braiding, as their citizen ants rush to
and from, from and to, and stand in queues to buy.
Picture credit: St Paul's Cathedral, London, 1890, Camille Pissarro (source: WikiArt).
Written in 2020.
