How It Should Have Been

It has been said that the genius of the English is not taking things to their logical conclusion. There is more than a small grain of truth in this. In other countries people take an idea and follow it through to the letter. In England we take a bit of an idea then compromise it out of existence to make it fit everything else.

Nevertheless there are several ideas which have never been taken to their logical conclusion anywhere. Presumably this is due to the baleful influence of the English. If only they had been developed exclusively in other countries the world would be a different place.

Take modern architecture. One of its fundamental principles was "structural honesty". You were supposed to see all the parts of a building in their purest form unadorned by decoration or disguise. Unfortunately some of the leading theoreticians of this movement were English. Consequently you can see all the metal beams holding the building up but it stops there. If you want to achieve real structural honesty what about the scaffolding? You cannot erect a building without scaffolding. Nor can you do so without builders and labourers. A finished modernist building should be covered in scaffolding and fringed by workmen's huts and cement mixers with workers continually on site adding and subtracting bits of it and drinking tea. Indeed there is no need for the building at all. Scaffolding is pure structure. Erect the scaffolding and drape a few windows and sheets of metal off it and you have your building. If buildings had been made this way we would not have had the outcry which followed the destruction of our favourite cities by the barbarous brutalism we have all come to hate.

Similarly there is the question of the cycling dogs. In a park called Grange Gardens in Cardiff in the early 1980s there was a large sign saying "No Cycling Dogs Allowed". I lived near there at the time and never saw a dog riding a bicycle but clearly this was a big issue in the area. Why stop at putting up a sign? If cycling dogs are a menace they should be treated accordingly. We would have been spared the vicious debates about foxhunting if we had employed huntsmen to round up packs of foxes to hunt the cycling dogs down. This would have been a major tourist attraction in the area and contributed significantly to the depressed local economy whilst the huntsmen paid their own way as they always do. It would have silenced the pro-fox anti-hunt brigade and opened up hunting opportunities for a section of the population generally excluded. There is also the question of the bicycles. The dogs must have been getting them from somewhere. Why did no one pass a law against selling bicycles to dogs? If their owners were buying them did no one notice the disparity in size? It is ridiculous to believe that only the dogs as big as men were terrorising Cardiff on their bikes. If you want to stop dogs riding bicycles all kinds of action could be taken. Instead of which the council relied on a painted wooden sign which was admittedly very effective.

Then there is the Chelsea Flower Show. Every year thousands of people gather to observe these extravagant floral displays and see the new breeds of plant that gardeners have developed. No one seems to care that it is not in fact the Chelsea Flower Show at all. It is owned and run by humans and all the exhibits are put there by humans. The flowers have no say in the matter. If it is a flower show the flowers themselves should own and run it and if it is the Chelsea Flower Show those flowers should come from Chelsea. All we know about flowers is what humans have discovered about them. As we are still discovering things the flowers must be able to do more than we know. So what is the problem with letting them do what they want at the show? Allowing them to form their own combinations would expose humans to hitherto undreamt-of possibilities. If they were responsible for their own planting and growth their natural limits would become clear. Furthermore if they had to prove they came from Chelsea to gain admittance to the show they would try ever harder to raise the standard to maintain this privilege. More flowers would come to Chelsea the rest of the year and flowers elsewhere would breed rapidly so that their towns could hold a similar event. Everyone would gain from a real Chelsea Flower Show. But it is not hard to see why it remains the Chelsea Human Gardener Show rather than that strange tribe of know-alls admitting the flowers might do it better.

We English do not take ideas to their logical conclusion because we are too frightened to do so. Maybe this is the root of the repressed character other nations accuse the English of having. We would all be better off if good ideas were completely fulfilled. But one of the few areas where the English still have influence is in the trades and professions. Things will never be done properly if the English run them. This is doubly sad when we realise that only the English are actually capable of running anything properly as history has shown us time and time again.