Tiddely Pom

Yesterday was sunny but cold. There were snow flurries late afternoon. We had more snow overnight- and it's snowing now- from a hazy sky with patches of blue. As before our region is getting off comparatively lightly. Northern Ireland has it bad; so does the West Coast of Scotland. Yesterday's news had footage of sheep being dug out of drifts.

Time For A Change

At the beginning of the 20th century there was a huge rejection of everything Victorian. The art, the fashions, the buildings, the morals- all were derided as silly and pompous and ugly. Thus far there has been nothing comparable with regard to the 20th century; we're still enthralled by its cultural icons, still worshiping, still imitating.  Roy Lichtenstein is being feted at the Tate and David Bowie at the V & A.- which is rather as if in 1913 those same institutions had chosen to celebrate Lord Leighton and Algernon Charles Swinburne- which of course they absolutely didn't.

Is the change coming? No signs of it yet, but perhaps the economic crisis into which we are wading ever deeper and deeper will bring it on. It's overdue, I think.The culture of the last century- with its compulsory nihilism, its dreary minimalism, its worked-to-death artistic and musical fashions- is getting to look awfully whiskery. Where are the young men and women of talent who will kick it into the ditch?