They passed a very pleasant day at Sker (as I was told that evening), pushing about among rocks and stones, and routing out this, that, and the other, of shells and sea-weed and starfish, and all the rest of the rubbish, such as amuses great gentry, because they have nothing to do for their living.
R. D. Blackmore - The Maid of Sker (1872)
Imagine David Attenborough pottering along a seashore telling us about shells and sea-weed and starfish, and all the rest of the rubbish.
It's a reminder of how sentimental we have become. In Blackmore's day, those who had to make a hard living from the sea were not sentimental about it as we are. In my view it is one of the changes which is killing us off – our diminished ability to be unsentimental.
3 comments:
We seem to have moved from considering it as "rubbish" - stuff that is irrelevant to earning a living - to considering it as having an importance in its own right. Johnny Morris, Hans and Lotte Hass and all those rather earnest nature programmes that I watched as a child. Then the pendulum swung even further, and nature was presented as having claims upon us. We had to treat it in a particular way, defined by experts. And now it seems that most of us ought to get out of the way of nature, to deny ourselves or actually die off in order to do it justice.
Here in New Zealand,we have just had a news report that 10 years after going aground and sinking , a container ship, or what is left of it has been gradually turning into the reef that it hit.This seems to have come as a big surprise to the environmental experts who had as usual been predicting that it was the end of the world since it sank.Does no one ever bother to look back and learn from previous events anymore ?
Sam - good point, nature is now presented as having claims upon us. It seems to have happened quite recently and always seemed to be in the background of David Attenborough's work. Look but don't touch.
John - it's odd because we've known for a long time that wrecks do become homes for sea life. It's as if the news causes many people to suspend their disbelief, just as they do for other forms of fiction.
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