Blether

I get quite a lot of hits from people doing Google searches for keats - analysis - when - i - have - fears - that - i - may - cease - to -be and of course this links to my post some time ago on the John Keats poem. This was part of an answer to an OU TMA and I wonder if its popularity (maybe 'popularity' is too strong a term) is due to a number of new OU students looking for inspiration. Of course my comments in italics at the end of the "analysis" were meant to be an iconoclastic blast to balance the stuffiness that went before. It surprises me that, apart from the fragrant Lingo Slinger who shared in the joke, no-one has seen fit to take me to task for this little bout of ribaldry. I must try harder, it seems, if I want to elicit some response from my fellow students of poetry.

This post will be a lot about not much. I have been inspired in this by Lingo Slinger who does nothing so well, if you see what I mean. There have been a few things on my mind recently but such have been 'events' that I have had no time to string a credible sentence together, never mind a paragraph of the necessary polemic to satisfy your slavering maws.

I was reading, a few days ago, Stephen Fry's compendium of his various newspaper columns, Paperweight. A glorious read and one of his creations, Professor Trefusis, goes on about turning places of education into places of training. "Training is what you give to a dog", he says, if I can paraphrase somewhat and, although the context was the Thatcher era, the sentiment and thrust of what he (Fry) was expressing is still very relevant today. How I wish that education could be a means of liberating our childrens' minds and not, with the constant emphasis on "vocational training", a means of shackling them to the values of commerce.

All that may seem a tad precious from someone who earns his living in the world of commerce, whose profession is engineering and not art history or somesuch, and who worries that his sons will be able to survive in the real world after school and university. Maybe so, but whatever my sons study (one is doing Business Management at uni and the other is in High School and, now that professional golfer is looking somewhat elusive, tells us he wants to be a carpenter) whatever they study, I want them to have a real understanding and appreciation of the creative arts at an age when they can take it further if they are inclined. And not have to wait as long as I did before studying something I'm really interested in for itself, as opposed to its value to my so-called career.