Social networking

Get the measure of the foe before the fray – helix (pomatia) rules, ok?

Yesterday, on Twitter, I amused myself (and, apparently, the good people of Harpenden, in Hertfordshire) with abusing literary quotations in support of the Westfield Action Group’s attempt to achieve Town Green status for a recreational green space threatened by town council development.  The land has, in its favour, a resident colony of threatened and protected Roman Snails (helix pomatia), which for me symbolise the very small and vulnerable with at least the potential to conquer the very strong; in essence, a David versus Goliath.  This is the stuff of legend, of the imagination and of crime writing, for here is the opposition of good and evil, life and death, virtue and vice, in the midst of which is the lone law enforcer (a Sarah Lund, say!) doing battle with the big wheels of government, international conglomerates and criminal organisations to strike at the heart of wrongdoing, often at the expense of his or her own personal life and peace of mind.  We love the chance to see the mighty fall and are captivated by the process by which it can, sometimes, happen; it is the sign of the weakness at the heart of all of us that cries out for justice.

So, today, there is a public inquiry and the town council, bulwarked by a barrister, is meeting on the metaphorical field its no doubt much under-rated opponent, the Chair of the Westfield Action Group, fellow writer and blogger, Carol Hedges, whose local community story immediately grabbed me when I read about it in my first visit to her blogsite.  I believe that she has a fair chance of success, not least because of the presence of the snails, and I sincerely hope that the process she has no doubt had to be obsessive about has not turned her into one of those manic lone rangers of the crime novel!

Here is one of yesterday’s tweets, for illustration:

Westfield: This other Eden, demi-paradise, this fortress built by Nature for herself against the council and its barrister.

Views my own, but one or two people may share them!

Our society thrives on gossip and there is, apparently, nothing more entertaining to us than to get the goss on celebrities, especially when they are members of the royal family.  I believe that there has been some news this week about a couple of them, but, for myself, I have done no more than register the single central fact of the story, just for knowledge’s sake.  I can do the rest in my head rather than have my head done in by a stream of statements of the obvious which the rest of the world seems to want to pore over, with some noticeable exceptions on Twitter!

Frankly, if ever there were a need for gagging the media, it’s now, as they focus with the usual unacceptable intensity upon the private lives of a young couple who deserve to be left well alone. Their families aside, who have a right to be interested in the detail, I honestly feel the rest of us can manage well enough with our knowledge of procreation.  There are currently some very worrying stories about women in the world which should demand our attention and, whilst we might like some good news to cheer our miserable December souls, we don’t need to have pages of it rammed down our gullets.   Good luck to you, happy fecund female and proud mate; we understand your excitement, your discomfort and your joy.   We’ll want to know that both mother and baby are healthy and well on your publication day, but now the world really does have other things to think about.

‘We’re expecting’  …  less intrusion.

Woman is pregnant.  Sorted.

We used to go for walks in the wild and leave our tracks, like Pooh and Piglet and the Woozles; you could mark our progress, if you were a tracker, by the broken twigs or the thread of cotton caught on a bush.  If we were really anti-social, you would find evidence of us in the bits of litter we left in our wake.

Now we walk in an ethereal world and we leave a trail of trivia in the tangled pathways of the digital web, by which we may be noticed and identified… or hunted.  The trouble is, that we incriminate ourselves by what might once have been quickly overwhelmed by weather or overgrown by nature, but which is now non-biodegradable and there in perpetuity, for anyone to discover.  And, if we happen to drop a tweet wrapper, the wet noses of the lawyers will sniff us out and pad inexorably along until we find ourselves surrounded by snapping, salivating jaw-suits.

We should have more respect for the world in which we now wander and treat it with care and goodwill; above all, we need to think about the possible consequences of thoughtless disregard for our environment and close properly other people’s gates and take our offensive twitter home with us.

I have been interested to read quite a number of recent Twitter posts which confirm a powerful hatred of fireworks and of Bonfire Night.  I enjoyed these two: “When I’m rich, I’m going to buy ALL the fireworks on sale on Merseyside and bury them” and “I refuse to endorse 400-year-old celebration of anti-Catholic bigotry.”  Personally, I have mixed feelings; the problem is that Bonfire Night and Hallowe’en have blended into a fortnight’s slow-release firework fest, combining the best of the visual extravaganza with the worst of the mischief.  However, I remember that, when I was growing up in Spalding, in the East of England, Bonfire Night and Mischief Night were rolled into one on November 5^th and children blacked their faces with soot on a cork or dressed up as ghosts and took their guy around the neighbourhood to demand (with appropriate chants) their treats; owners of pets knew that there would be only a couple of days of potential danger for their animals and the whole thing seemed to be blessed with innocent fun and excitement.  I have not forgotten that my imagination was always inspired by the occasion, for there lay behind it all a sense of the macabre and of lurking threat, which was real enough in the time of James 1^st and still finds its way in various forms into the work of crime novelists.  I rather like Bonfire Night… and a plot to blow up Parliament is the stuff of fancy!