Last Sunday, I turned down an offer to have a go on a skateboard but accepted another to try an electric bike. Subconsciously, I suppose, it was hard for me to imagine a future scenario in which a skateboard might be useful to me. Easier to foresee the advantages of the bike. Yes, old age approaches and, with it, the tendency to assess a proposal more carefully. An electric bike, not a skateboard, is the logical progression towards a mobility scooter and a last chance to look cool on one’s ride.
The past week has been spent partly in the capital, supporting a general-purpose protest rally against government policies (or the lack thereof) and partly in Plymouth, mingling with holidaymakers while entertaining a visiting relative. The contrast between existential crises and escapist distractions is stark. On the one hand, a section of the populace is fighting for social justice and a green future while, on the other, the intensity of focus is more on ice cream. And all the while, in the background, there is an unseemly scrap for the leadership of the governing party being fought by two candidates who have made no mention of any topic other than the one that preoccupies the masters of their fate (their party members), tax cuts. You couldn’t make it up! Well, you don’t have to: this is reality.
Stereotypes abound everywhere. Yesterday, we took a seasonal ferry that plies the tourist route from Plymouth to the ‘unspoilt’ Cornish fishing village of Cawsand. The ferry operating company seems to have decided that it is really in the entertainment business, nostalgia being a crucial ingredient. When all the passengers are aboard, a swivel-eyed, dishevelled old geezer with a messy head of hair topped by a sailor’s cap makes his way to the cockpit, the window of which has a sign saying, “Skipper only”. We half expect him to address us in pirate dialect, but he remains aloof and fires up the diesel. Meanwhile, the other crew member comes round selling tickets-on-a-roll that might have been printed in the 1950s. He is a personable young Liverpudlian who has perfected a routine of friendly, responsive banter that sets the ladies’ hearts a-flutter and makes their menfolk feel like leaden-footed land-lubbers. He does a good job of making the short journey feel like a jolly holiday excursion – and of ensuring the ‘tips’ bucket gets filled before we all step ashore. Observing all this, I saw echoes of the pantomimical style of the government that is presently in command of the British ship of state, but at least the players in this vignette are doing a properly co-ordinated job of steering us safely to an agreed destination.
Back in London, while the try-out on the electric bike was urged on me by a friend and contemporary, the offer of a go on a skateboard was made by an American chap who looks and behaves younger than his forty-odd years. He joined our small lunch party, during which he opened our eyes to another stereotype – our view of Rwandan politics. Having lived and worked there for the last fifteen years (in the field of socio-economics), he had observed that, despite its relatively authoritarian form of government, political corruption is not tolerated and there are strong elements of consensual social responsibility – rooted, perhaps, in traditional tribal and village governance traditions – which today’s western socialist movements could only dream of achieving. The policy of shipping asylum seekers there – or anywhere – is a separate discussion.
The slip-slap of flip-flops, the profusion of paddle-boards and the excited squealing of children playing in water all tell us that the school holidays have begun. Summer is well under way, but I am feeling edgy not relaxed. Politically, economically and ecologically the world is on the edge of a precipice. I worry that it may fall off before my electric bike years have even started.
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