Author: Mark Hannam

I am writing this text at my house in Co Donegal, on the west coast of Ireland.  This is my first visit for twelve months, my first journey into the European Union since the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland formally exited.  Flying from London to Belfast was my first trip by plane for a year and, for some reason I am not fully certain of, it was comforting to travel at altitude once more.  I am glad to be back.

The house was in good condition, despite the absence of occupants for a year.  My neighbour checks in regularly and my local contractor fixed a problem with the heating system over the winter.  There are no signs of damp or water damage, no broken tiles or windowpanes, and the plumbing and electrics all seem to be working well.  I have replaced the batteries in the smoke alarms and defrosted the freezer, and in addition I have given all the rooms a thorough clean since I discovered a greater than usual number of spider’s webs and a plenitude of dead flies. Most of the latter were scattered across the floors: I imagine the flies entered the house via the vents in the windows but could not find their way back out again and died of cold, hunger, or old age.  A few were tangled up in webs, but I suspect most of the flies that were trapped that way had already been eaten.  The war between the Arachnids and the Muscidæ lacks the graphic intensity of Tennyson’s “nature, red in tooth and claw” and does not stir the passions as that between the Jets and the Sharks, but it is nonetheless one small part of the cosmic evolutionary struggle.  The detritus of battle was soon sucked up by my vacuum cleaner, and the house feels more comfortable for humans as a result.

Continue reading “I re-land”

We call them the Dark Ages, but all that we mean is that we cannot see. R G Collingwood

I have written previously about Dante, who died seven hundred years ago.  He is considered by some critics to be the greatest poet of the Western canon, whose artistic innovation in the Commedia transformed our understanding of what it means to be human.  One of the conceits of the poem is that Dante, the narrator of the story, is guided through hell and purgatory by Virgil, the Roman poet whom he greatly admired.  Previously, I had taken this to be solely a literary device, that allows for a continuous dialogue between the two protagonists as they travel, by which the fates of the various characters they encounter can be explained to the reader and, at the same time, an implicit assertion by Dante that he too ranked as one of the great poets.  Recently, my attention was drawn to a point that previously I had missed entirely: Virgil lived in the age of the Emperor Augustus, born in 70BCE and died in 19BCE, whereas Dante was born in 1265CE and died in 1321CE.  The distance in time between Dante’s death and Virgil’s death – 1340 years – is almost twice as long as the distance between the date of Dante’s death and the present time.  Dante is far more contemporary with us than Virgil was with him. 

Now consider a modern-day poet.  Bob Dylan this year celebrated his eightieth birthday.  Growing up, he would have enjoyed the US’s post-war economic boom, in his twenties he was part of the Civil Rights Movement, in the seventies he lived through the Vietnam War, the oil crisis, and the first landing on the moon.  In more recent years he will have encountered novelties such as the internet, electric cars, and 3D-printing.  Now imagine a woman who celebrated her eightieth birthday in the year of his birth.  She would have been born in 1861, the year that the Civil War broke out in the US, and during her lifetime she would have experienced the development of electric lights, motor cars, the first human flight in an aeroplane, and the first global war.  She would also have been entertained by innovations such as photography, the movies, and jazz music.  The world of her birth – when none of the above were part of daily life – seems unimaginably remote to me.  While Bob Dylan seems to be my contemporary, an imaginary woman who lived from 1861 to 1941 appears to come from way back in the historical past.

Continue reading “Lost time”

The United States is currently pulling its armed forces out of Afghanistan.  Unsurprisingly, the European nations are following close behind, having neither the resources nor the resolve to remain and fight once their American colleagues have departed.  The chaos at Kabul airport portends what might happen next across the entire country, as the American-backed Afghani government disintegrates, and the Taliban and its associates move in to fill the power vacuum.  In a speech given in early July, President Biden argued that “… after twenty years … a trillion dollars spent …” it was the right time for American troops to come home.  In this text I am not going to take a view about whether his decision to bring the war to an end now is sensible, nor whether the decision by one of his predecessors to start the war in the first place was justified, rather I want to reflect on the price-tag associated with the endeavour.

The Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, at Brown University, has provided some analysis of the costs of the “War on Terror”, launched back in 2001 in response to the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.   In a paper published in November 2019, which takes account of budget forecasts for the fiscal year 2020, they estimate the full costs of the various wars to be just over $5.4 trillion dollars.  Add in their estimate for medical and disability costs for veterans (a liability that has been incurred already, but not yet budgeted for) and the total rises to just over $6.4 trillion dollars.  This bill includes not just the costs of the war in Afghanistan, but also the war in Iraq, as well as spending on homeland security, and probably the costs of running the Guantanamo Bay Detention Centre too.  It is an impressively large sum of money: $6,400,000,000,000. 

Continue reading “Welfare versus warfare”

When I was a teenager, I had a friend whose father ran one of the local churches.  Sometimes I went to the house where my friend lived and remember being slightly surprised to discover a small white statuette on a corner table in a reception room used for informal meetings with church members.  It was around 25cm high and showed a man and woman, seated, unclothed, embracing each other, and kissing.  It’s location appeared somewhat incongruous: when would an evangelical Protestant minister make use of such an object, when giving advice or instruction to members of his congregation?   To my uneducated taste, it also appeared kitschy: a sentimental, unworldly representation of sexual desire.  To repeat, I was a teenager: I knew little about art or passion. 

There is a full-size version of the same statue, just under 2m high, currently on view at Tate Modern in London outside the entrance to The Making of Rodin exhibition, which runs until mid-November.  “The Kiss” is one of Auguste Rodin’s most famous works, a monumental sculpture which merits close attention and admiration: the adjacency of the couple’s left feet, the muscle definition of the man’s back, the matching ninety-degree angle bends at the woman’s left elbow and knee, and the book in the man’s right hand.  What was he reading, I wonder, before she sat next to him and kissed him?  I now know better than to consider the work to be kitsch, but I remain puzzled about why a small copy was on display in a Guildford vicarage. 

Continue reading “Statues of liberty”

I used to own two cars – one that I kept in London, the other in Ireland – but last year I sold them both.  They were useful on occasion and one of them was enjoyable to drive, but I did not use either of them often and the cumulative cost of buying them, taxing them, insuring them, paying for parking permits, servicing them, and repairing them when they broke down, became disproportionate to the benefits I derived from my ownership of them.  From an economic point of view, it made sense to sell them and make use of rental cars when needed, thus saving significantly on operating expenses.  From an environmental point of view, it also made sense because now I use public transport or walk more often, reducing by a little the global rate of consumption of fossil fuels. 

Living in London without a car is very practical, not just because the city has plenty of public transport options and is comfortably walkable.  There is also a very good car-sharing club to which I belong.  If I need to use a car or a van for any reason, I can book online and pay an hourly rate (which varies from around £9 to £15, depending on the day, the time, and the type of vehicle) or a daily rate.  The club has parking bays all over the city and the vehicles are booked and accessed using a phone app, which make the process very convenient.  Last weekend I hired a van for three hours, to move some large items – a few paintings, some large terracotta pots, and a desk – from the flat I have been renting temporarily to the property I bought earlier this year, which is currently being renovated.  This weekend, I booked a car for three hours to move some smaller items – my desktop computer, printer, CD player and miscellaneous other items – in preparation for moving into my new home.   I have temporary need of the use of a van and a car because I am in transit.

Continue reading “In transit”