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April 2007 Archives

April 28, 2007

Collective consciousness


I’ve always been fascinated by the origins of social phenomena. What are the forces that affect or perhaps afflict groups or communities? For example a couple of years ago men instantaneously began wearing pink tops such as polo shirts. I’m not talking about gays and golfers but off duty draymen, brawny bricklayers, tattooed pot-bellied prop forwards and national front hit squads; the sort of characters who would dine on the own vomit rather than wear pink. Did Julian Macdonald accept a challenge of foisting this taboo colour on the great unwashed over a cocktail in the Golden Dap? “Bet you a tenner I can�

Another example took place about ten years ago on a crisp December afternoon. Every rugby referee on the planet instantaneously turned a blind eye to the rugby union law that states that the ball has to be fed into the scrum, straight. Up until that point any feed that was a millimetre off straight was penalised. In the recent Anglo-Welsh cup final Harry Ellis at one particular scrum was facing his own posts as he rolled the ball into his second row. Had the refs been planning this coup using the Chinese whispers and the referee grapevine, or was it pure coincidence?

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April 22, 2007

From suburbia to bohemia

Until recently I enjoyed a 27 year contented existence in suburban Cardiff. I've now decamped to densest bed-sit land. To provide the area with a modicum of anonymity my pad is about equidistant between The Locomotive and The Claude. It is that part of Roath that will be forever Bangladesh, Iran, Estonia, Somalia: a latter day Ellis Island. The contrast between my new "manor" and the leafy glades of suburbia are stark and on many levels. In the suburbs people practise a planned economy and lifestyle. The annual holiday and the triennial car change are budgeted well in advance. Most don't just know where they are now but where they plan to be in five years time. The rituals that are the essence of organised family life are community wide, such as the weekend shop at Tescos, trips to B & Q on the bank holiday, and the Sunday flash floods through the estate as all the dads hose down the Focus and Mondeos while Mum mows the lawn as the veg simmers.

The people of bed-sit land have, in contrast, a philosophy of instant gratification. The first thing I noticed was the large number carrying a "must be seen with" accessory much like Prada or Gucci handbag in more genteel society. This is a can of lager and the favoured designer label is Stella Artois. I witness this from dawn to dusk. Perhaps it has something to with street credibility of the local sub-culture. As a grey haired man walked toward me with his dog at 8.00 o'clock one morning I expected a nod of mutual recognition of old school values. As he passed he mumbled some incoherent verbiage as his dilated pupils stared vacantly over my shoulder into infinity. He was carrying a can of White Lightening.

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