Ahoy Tash Appreciators,
I trust you all enjoyed the extra day(s) off this week!
I enjoyed the days aff but I didn’t enjoy the Jubilee stuff. It was the concert that bothered me most.
As most of you will know, there are few things I enjoy more than dropping transcendental dance moves which defy modern physics and scorch dance floors to such an extent that they release neutrinos that travel just beyond the speed of light (ipso facto, I’m proof that time travel is possible). However, the line-up on Monday allowed no room for even conventional dance moves as it was made up of artists who were either well past their best or those who have always been utterly boring and/or totally talentless.
I actually felt sorry for Paul McCartney. He looked ridiculous:
This is going to sound stupid but I was reminded of Aesop’s fable about the lion in the jungle. You know, the one about the lion that was lying dying in the jungle and, as he was lying there, all the other animals crowding round to taunt him. The story goes that a mouse scurried on top of the lion and, while dancing on his nose, said “He can’t do anything to us now!” The animals all laughed and continued to make fun of the lion but, with all the energy left in his body, the lion lifted his head and said “Mock me now, but I was a lion once.”
I used to always think of that story as something to aim for. I used to think that if I could say “I was a lion once” when I was on my deathbed then life couldn’t have been too bad. But I have changed my mind. For example, was the jubilee not just an entire country saying that we were collectively lions once? What happened to dying before we get old?
Of all the boats etc on the Thames, how many had some tenuous historical significance and how many were the kind of hi-tech ships that are still being built on the Clyde? In the fly past, how many Second World War planes did you see compared with ultra-modern Typhoons which are partly made in Britain? At the concert, of the big names, how many were from the 60s, 70s and 80s and how many were “current” British bands of substance and quality (i.e. not from some nonsense TV show)?
To take the lion analogy to a conclusion: if I was a lion lying on my deathbed, I wouldn’t want to be justifying my life to a mouse. I’d want to be looking around at the next generation and thinking to myself “it’ll be ok, they’ll be lions in the future”. I don’t want to constantly look back at the things we did in the past; I want to be hopeful about what we can do in the future.
Rather than rolling out these poor folk whose best days are long gone, and generally raking over the past at every opportunity, could we not have seen the people that make Britain “Great” now? Would it kill people to consider looking at or listening to something new and interesting rather than fawning over the “has beens” and “will never be’s” that always seem to dominate.
I’ll leave you with the counter-point to the picture of McCartney at the Jubilee. It’s a picture of The Beatles at the height of their powers:
How do you know when someone’s at the top of their game? They can pull off a Tash.
Have a great weekend folks!
Tash Friday 