When I was a student our little clique abducted a gnome from the garden of a tutor, to whom we subsequently sent a series of postcards purporting to be from the gnome, who “had gone on tour”. Of course, garden gnomes don’t take holidays and, even if they did, their postcards would not have their hometown postmark stamped on them: it was just a jolly jape. But if gnomes disappear from gardens these days they are more likely to have been stolen in earnest for, according to the headlines, there is an acute shortage of them in the shops. And this is no joke, because the reasons for the shortage comprise a warning about the state of world affairs: Covid has caused a surge of interest in gardening among stay-at-homers, leading to increased demand for garden ‘products’, the supply of which depends on the availability of materials and unhindered trading links. An unexpected pandemic, coinciding with Brexit and the temporary blockage of the Suez canal have highlighted the fragility of the latter, while the scramble for raw materials has always been at the heart of geopolitics.
It seems odd that our gnomes are made in faraway places such as China – but I’m sure this is commercial opportunism, not cultural appropriation, since Chinese tradition has its own mythical creature, the dragon. Perhaps now is the time to re-shore gnome manufacture, not to reclaim our heritage but to reduce the carbon footprint of the little fellers who travel halfway round the world, only to spend the rest of their lives stationary in suburbia. As children, in the 1950s, we had a plaster-casting kit, complete with Humbrol paints, with which we could make our own gnomes while waiting for the peas to sprout.
I don't have a garden, just a balcony and, while scouring the internet recently for a weatherproof outdoor storage chest, I was dismayed by the vast range of stuff on offer, none of which appealed, aesthetically, practically or eco-sustainably. What to do? The solution was a visit to a local depot that sells military surplus equipment, where I hoped to find something I could re-purpose. I came away with a NATO anemometer-container that is not only weatherproof, but bombproof. Even so, I was dismayed by the fact that there was a huge pile of these expensive-looking containers and by the whiff of ill-spent taxpayers’ money which hung about it. If NATO has no use for hundreds of anemometer cases, why were they made in the first place? I have some satisfaction in being able to repurpose one of them, but what will be next? The news is that Russia is massing an army on the Ukrainian border and, with President Biden now in office, NATO forces will probably be on the alert and stocking up on all sorts of expensive equipment. I hope they don’t ask me for their box back.
It appears that Russia is planning a land-grab, as is China, whose sights are set on Taiwan. If this is the case, there is a question over why either nation would bother. Assuming that the goal of conquest is material enrichment, surely the preferable means to that end is trade, not war? Ask the Swiss. Even we British, who used a deadly combination of manufacturing and enforced commerce to gain wealth, have in the end come to rely on trade to sustain the economy. Now, our manufacturing has fallen away and our military power has been eclipsed. Still, there is some ironic satisfaction in the endurance of some incidental cultural exports: the language, cricket, football, rugby and – to my astonishment – snooker, which has become huge in China, where Ronnie O’Sullivan is now an icon. Pedantically speaking, it could be argued that this is a form of cultural appropriation, but I am relaxed about that. As long as they keep us supplied with gnomes, it’s a fair exchange.
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