Expensive bosh
Leafing through Philosophy Now in the Swiss Cottage library. Someone has added comments in biro; a spindly hand I associate with an elder member of society. Derrida is ‘clownish’. An article on ‘Ecstasy Through Self-Destruction’, is ‘bosh’ and Noam Chomsky ‘pillock’ has his name defaced so it reads Chimpsky, which frankly, I thought a bit childish. I looked at the shocking state of the seven older men with whom I now shared the room. One with a bulbous nose, asleep. Another obsessively rearranging chairs, noisily shifting them from one side of the 'quiet' reading room to the other. One absently flicked through Dancing Times, the rest read newspapers with screamy headlines that appeared satirical, but weren't.
This, after my morning coffee in an NW6 cafe, where Lyn introduces herself to me over the LRB and assuming I’m a ‘reader’ tells me about the funding cuts planned for the city’s libraries. I just must go up to Swiss Cottage and sign the petition. I do/did. Today, in the National Portrait Gallery, I run into the same Lyn who, astounded by the coincidence, asks me for my email address and is my first new London friend. I remember London being like this back in '01, but even I thought that perhaps times had changed. My latest intel has it that the guest list of the minute is that of the US Ambassador. Apparently his parties are fantastically caj-fab, so I ponder how in the next two years I might come to score an invite. I also learn the embassy is shifting from Mayfair to Battersea, which I assume is a coup for the developers of the new Thames-fronted site, but it’s more pragmatic than that – a security issue foremost, for they can’t be building bomb-proof bunkers amid the rarefied streets and five star hotels of Hyde Park East. Ah, America.
As for Iraq, that corner plot in Colombo said it all. Prime real estate with an artisan sandstone perimeter and intricate wrought iron gates. Beyond that, scraggle. Wild vegetative scraggle. And refuse. Rubble and refuse. A vine partially obscuring the oxidised plaque, I finally figured out what it was I was looking at, or more to the point, not looking at when I lifted the veil of weeds to one side: ‘The Embassy of the Republic of Iraq’.
Not yet a philosopher (nowhere near it), but prone to thinking, my sensitivities needed some fresh air, so on the weekend, AB and I struck out into the sunshine for a vigorous walk from Dover to St Margaret’s along the White Cliffs. Enjoyable as it was, the contrast is stark and sobering given you can’t unknow what’s happening just over there, on the French side of the channel. A clear day, we could see the opposing cliffs at Calais, our lunch stop so close to France I was welcomed to the country by French Vodafone informing me ‘global roaming’ had been activated. Capital slips with such ease between borders.
A first visit of what will be many to the LRB Bookshop threw up this eye-catching question of the front of the TLS 'Why so few women philosophers?'. Passing over the temptation to be drawn in, I left it on the rack, but the question (which annoyed me) stuck, my retort growing larger and uglier as the days passed... Until one of the weekend supplements threw up a doozy re: Joey Barton's philosophical efforts. I had to laugh. Who am I to pass judgement on whether Joey Barton is a philosopher or not? In fact, I found the piece enjoyable, pitched perfectly at a weekend readership, but if we're to apply the same bar...? Well - women philosophers? I know a few...
Plain old bosh