Benefit Street, Brighton.

I utterly refuse to consider people other than Saul on the road to Damascus as having had epiphanies.   Neither Newton nor Archimedes claimed one  and both of them knew of the concept. Nor can Joan of Arc reliably be credited with one, because she was in all probability schizophrenic. An epiphany demands clouds parting, trumpets, and heralds at the very least. Plus a loud booming voice off-stage. So I seriously question people who say they got all this action on the top of the No.5 bus on the way to the Pizza parlour. It may be obvious by now that I did not have an epiphany this afternoon.  But, having been so vehement about repudiating the tendency people have lately of having epiphanies on a semi-regular basis and without visible effects and cloud parting; I find myself bereft of a way to say what happened to me this afternoon. Perhaps it was a revelation? But that still sounds faintly ecclesiastical – so...no.  Yet I honestly felt ...

                                                   Unlike, presumably, the AQA and those who have made the decision to circumvent our children’s education, I have actually lived in a country – a very large and populous country – where more than two generations  have been brought up in utter ignorance of their history, their place in the world, or any sense of the aesthetic. They live their entire lives unmindfull of the fact that beauty exists as anything other than an artificial and economic imperative. As a result of having shriven from their environment all that is not logical, practical and dependant for its value upon re-sale worth, their country has become a barren, featureless landscape; their cities the most polluted concrete units in all the world; their children unable to project interest beyond the sealed barrier of Self. Artsy-fa...