DIARY
Bruce Chatwin's new book, The Song- lines, which I have not read, apparently introduces us to a system by which Abor- igines find their way about. From songs, they learn the routes by which they can navigate thousands of miles. Some irreve- rent spirits have suggested that the Abos have hoodwinked us and that they are doing nothing more than humming 'Walt- zing Matilda' in return for government grants. The truth of the matter must be very hard to discover without going on a guided tour of the Songlines oneself. But What is interesting is the romance and importance with which these lines are invested. Mr Chatwin imagines Songlines reaching back to the 'isolated pocket in the African savannah' where man was first conscious of his own existence. Why is it that such things are only considered excit- ing and cosmically significant when they concern primitive man? However remark- able the Aboriginal Songlines may be, they are nothing like as extraordinary as the Songlines of civilisation. How miraculous and strange it is, for example, that a supermarket can contain fresh food from thousands of miles away, that we trust the System of food supply so much that we will eat this food, that because we hand over bits of paper and metal in return for this food the growers, shippers and retailers all make a living, and that the whole chain is established without a single presiding in- telligence. How wonderful it is that we have developed a language capable of expressing not just material wants and basic desires but ideas, histories, morali- ties, scientific information, jokes, complex feelings, scenes imagined and remem- bered; and that this language communi- cates not just in speech and song, but through writing, printing, radio, television and computer. Mr Chatwin, I gather, attributes the authorship of civilisation to nomads. Even if he is right, the flower seems to me infinitely more fascinating than the root. The dullest London street tells us far richer things about humanity than everything primitive peoples have ever done. The Ordnance Survey is a more beautiful achievement than the Aboriginal Songline.
• • . the teacher should start where the child is and should accept the language he brings to school'. So says the Bullock Report A Language for Life on the teaching of English. The report, first pub- lished in 1975, is identified as a source of much of the current wrong orthodoxy on the subject by John Marenbon in the excellent recent pamphlet English our En- glish (Centre for Policy Studies, £3.90). Starting 'where the child is' is one version CHARLES MOORE of a prevalent moral notion of our time. No debate in the General Synod of the Church of England is complete without someone saying that we should 'meet people where they are' (e.g. homosexuals, divorced peo- ple, people who cannot understand the old liturgy). No doubt it is a Christian principle to meet people where they are rather than to sit comfortably at home waiting for them to come to you; but the question is, when you have met them, what do you do next? If the child, for instance, has scarcely any language, what is the use of 'accepting' that language? Once you have met people where they are you are not supposed just to sit around and enjoy the view. Christian imagery and teaching emphasise that there is a path and that people need a guide, a shepherd, a 'kindly light'. Where people are is usually in the wrong place.
alking to work on Monday, I stop- ped to post some letters. A woman pushing a pram stopped too, about to enter the post office. As well as the baby in the pram, she had a boy of about three. She said to him, 'I'm bloody, f...ing warning you. I'll smash your head against the wall tonight.' I looked at the children. They appeared well-fed and healthy. The boy seemed unperturbed by the threat. His mother looked very placid, despite her words. I decided, of course, not to interfere. Life would certainly be better if people did not speak to their children like that but, for all the alarm about child abuse, it would even more certainly be worse if citizens were trained to upbraid them whenever they did so. That, at least, was my timid reasoning at the time.
When I went to Bombay three years ago, I had an introduction to Salim Ali, the greatest Indian ornithologist. On arriving at the flat of our host, Dhiren Bhagat, the Spectator's Indian correspondent, we walked onto the balcony. Among the film stars' villas immediately below I noticed a beautiful old bungalow distinguished from its neighbours by its pleasant garden and lack of ostentation. 'Oh, that belongs to Salim Ali, the bird man,' said Dhiren. Delighted by this chance proximity in such a huge and congested city, we called on Mr Ali, who was courteous and charming as only a highly educated Indian can be. He was then 88 and deaf, but still active. He died earlier this month. His achievement was extraordinary. Almost single-handedly he made India aware of its birds for the first time, and he produced the ten-volume Handbook of the Birds of India and Pakis- tan. His relationship with the British was typical both of what was good and bad about the Raj. His boyhood interest in birds was cultivated by W. S. Millard, secretary of the Bombay Natural History Society, who identified the yellow-throated sparrow the nervous eight-year-old brought him and to whom he was forever grateful. But when Mr Ali wanted to study zoology in England in 1929, he got such a dusty answer that he went to Germany instead. I recommend his autobiography The Fall of a Sparrow (OUP).
It is said that a press campaign can only succeed when it is prepared to bore the readers. Repetition is necessary, new stor- ies do not necessarily emerge, and yet the cause is just and urgent. This is true of the case of the Guildford pub bombing convic- tions and the loosely associated convictions of the Maguires for making bombs. As we have said often before in these pages, the convictions were patently unjust. There is little to add, except, I am glad to say, that the matter has not been forgotten by those of the great and the good who have interested themselves in the question. So I simply repeat the point, and make no apology for boring anyone.
Happily, there is no chance yet of going on too much about the horrors of British Telecom. Our own sufferings have been matched by those of people all over the country. As a small contribution to the saving of the heritage which Telecom is wantonly destroying the Spectator has bought a K2 red telephone box. So sturdy is the dear old thing that we cannot get it into our offices. I hereby offer it as a prize' to the person who sends us the best British Telecom horror story. The story must be from direct personal experience and sup- ported by respectable evidence. Please send it to: BT Horror Competition, The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1. If you feel daunted by the prospect of winning a telephone box, do not worry. The K2 has considerable commercial value. Entries, please, by 7 August. Next week's Diarist will be Max Hastings.
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