Not My Patch

          During these long, dark winter evenings I’ve been watching a lot of catch-up TV – something that wasn’t possible before the internet. Back then, millions of us used to tune in simultaneously to a limited range of live broadcasts, thereby ingesting fare that became a binding agent for society – or so the argument goes. Whether that resulted in a ‘better’ society would depend on who was in control of media and messaging, but the technology was perfect for the promotion of monoculture, a system that discourages individuals from questioning the majority view.

          But thanks to the internet and, to some extent, the relative diversity of our media, we Britons have escaped the monocultural hell of, say, North Koreans. We find ourselves, instead, with something more like a patchwork culture – a colourful blanket of mini-monocultures stitched together. I spent the past week immersed in someone else’s patch.

           I was in the historic cathedral city of Salisbury, not in order to delve into its heritage as I would have liked, but to assist with the sensitive business of relocating my Other Half’s Aunt Jill from her house to a nursing care home. The combination of physical frailty and dementia had at last made it impossible for Jill to be cared for anywhere else, though she was in denial of the fact. It was tough work emotionally and a saddening, tiresome task physically. My part concerned mostly the latter, the sorting of possessions, which was daunting since she never knowingly threw anything out of the house, apart from kitchen waste. Her welfare is in the hands of professionals and she now has only the essentials plus a few comforters around her.

          From my point of view, the real value of Jill’s possessions lies in the way they illustrate the story of her life (and that of her parents, since she had kept most of their things as well). As I sifted through evidence of a life that had once been filled with musical activities, charitable causes, friendships and a devotion to the Church of England, I was saddened by the way in which all this had finally slipped beyond her control and now lay in useless piles around the house. It was as if none of it had ever really mattered. And if that is true for Jill, is it not true for all of us? The process reinforced my long-standing decision to divest myself of my redundant paraphernalia long before someone else had to do it for me. I’ve already made progress in that respect by ditching CDs in favour of a Spotify account, for example. And, come springtime, I might put my kayak on eBay. Not that my demise is known to be imminent, but it’s as well to bear it in mind.

          Perhaps Jill’s tendency to keep everything she ever owned is more complicated than can be explained by the word “hoarder”, though I could only speculate as to what that explanation might be, since she came across as pragmatic rather than materialistic. Her values, which I’ve gleaned from knowing her superficially, conform to the Christian textbook and manifest themselves in traditional, conventional, middle-class English behaviour. When talking with her, there never seemed to be room for the intrusion of anything else: any attempt to engage her with new or controversial ideas ran straight into the buffers of uninterest. She liked the cocoon of her own mini-monoculture. Don’t we all, to some extent?

          Jeff Beck died yesterday. He was a guitar hero to my generation of rock/blues fans, but I suppose Jill was unaware of that, even though he was only two years younger than her: she abhors ‘pop’ music. But I’ll be wallowing later in the nostalgia of my own mini-monoculture, watching YouTube vids of him (something I could not have done pre-internet).