Went to the local charity shop to buy a book. They have a huge selection. Mostly holiday reads. Visitors to Malta bring their reading matter
with them. It’s part of what a holiday
is about. Time to chill in the sun,
swim, enjoy the local cuisine and sights.
The novels represent the luxury of free time that is rare commodity
today. Many enjoy their kindle, light
compact but a portable library in many ways.
But what do they read? Well, I’m
no expert but having lived quite a few years abroad I’ve noticed some
things. First, I have to confess as far
as books go I’m omnivorous. I’ll
consume just about anything. In my
search for input I’ll devour fact or fiction.
I’m not even fussy about it being contemporary. I’ve read my way through out of date versions
of The New Scientist, The Economist and enjoyed it all. While working at Daresbury synchrotron I
read all the material available in the coffee room. Mostly catalogue on vacuum pumps and machinery but also a
complete collection of Asterix cartoons.
While on Rhodes, knowing my hunger for reading materials good friends
would deliver black bin liners full of novels left behind by tourists at hotels
during summer holidays. I’d devour all
but then be instantly hungry for more.
So here on Malta I noticed a shelf of brand new novels (well new to the
charity shop) and I pounced eagerly.
Only to find novels on murder, betrayal, mass killers, drug cartels,
military assassination, child killers, child abuse, child abduction, spousal
abuse, incest, graphic tales of autopsies, violent cop incidents etc for the first time in my life I could not
find anything to my taste. I've
discovered what people now read on holiday and it’s shit. We read it and I fear we have become
it. Don’t think for one moment that our
TV shows escape this modern slant. The
popular ones all peddle the same violent content with an undercurrent message
that everyone is a killer/amoral. There
are no heroes, just villains in various shades of grey. Speaking of ‘Shades of Grey’ I've never read
this particular book but I fear it may trigger my shit alert meter as
well. I actually had a moment of
crystal clarity as I stood before shelf upon shelf of novels longing to pick
one, anyone. I took a step back and
thought.
“Why do people read all this shit?”
“Why do people watch all this shit?”
Are our lives so smeared with the stuff we are infinitely
more comfortable surrounded by it. My
grandfather’s pig shed smelt astonishingly bad. The odour was like a facial smack when you entered. You couldn't
help raising a hand to your nose and face to protect them from the
assault. After 15 minutes in the shed
admiring the new piglets you hardly noticed it at all. That’s how adaptable our senses are. Most people cannot smell their own B.O. We have grown accustomed to our own
stink. We cannot really register
it. Like the pig shed our senses have
gone into overload and switched off to protect us. Only something much more foul smelling than we're used to is
picked up. So, I fear our books,
newspapers, TV shows, Internet content have noticed our jaded tastes and slowly
adapted to grab our attention. In a
world full of shit, it seems only the even more shitty gets our attention. I could be wrong but I fear I’m not. There are those who benefit massively from
our abundance of shit. My grandfather
called them ‘shit house rats’. Huge
foot-long brutes that thrived on the pig shit that was produced in abundance. They grew sleek and huge on this diet, a
breed apart. His cats and dogs were
nervous of this tougher crew. My
grandfather fought a losing battle with the rats over many years.
Do we become what we devour?
Or are we like the ‘shit house rats’ designed to eat the
stuff?
Was it always so?
Have our tastes got worse?
What does it do to our communities?
I don't know the answer to any of the above. I’m just really concerned that no one is even
asking these questions. Perhaps we've all been in the pig shed far too
long.
PS I don't know if
it is significant but rats eat faeces, because their digestive system is poor
at absorbing nutrients and a second go through the system helps digestion.
PPS pigs will also happily eat the faeces of other animals,
this desire to eat faeces is called Coprophagia
PPS Cows are vegetarian by choice but we like to feed them
chicken faeces, because it is cheap, this is how (bovine spongiform encephalopathy)-
Mad Cow Disease arose. In US and other places outside UK they will not accept
our blood donations because of the prevalence of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease
(CJD), from eating the mad cows.
