Born on the Fourth of July

It's Alzheimer or assassins. That's all there is on the news these days.

If it's not some psychopathic Islamic group trying to out gross Attila the Hun, it's Dame Joan Bakewell talking about...I forget.

At this time of year it should be all tinsel, toothache and toys. When the Christian message is corrupted into a tsunami of corporate greed and consumer corruption.  And there's the ruble which is in truble...

At the weekend my wife was running a workshop at the Victoria and Albert museum in South Kensington. I went with her to help her out. I then walked along the Brompton Road and stopped off at Harrods.

I have no idea why Harrods is seen as the height of sophistication and glamour. It is gross, it is the high temple of consumerism and it stinks. Everyone there is desperate, desperate to buy, desperate to sell and with little idea of why they're there except to consume.

On the way home I bought 4 shirts from a shop in Jermyn Street. £90 for the four. That's how it works. The shirts were tagged at £79  each - in purchasing 4 I saved over £200. Really? I had no intention of buying those shirts when I walked along Piccadilly. In fact I was after some perfume, but I couldn't find it. So why didn't I just go home?

My consuming gene had been triggered and I had to buy something. There was the bait in the shirt shop and I was hooked.

Unrestrained  consumption. It'll be the death of us, but not before the death of  loads of other (now) living creatures that tentatively share this planet with us. 

Which brings me back to forgetfulness and assassins. For many, consumption fills a gap, we can't bear the emptiness, the aching lack of meaning to our lives. Over consuming fills (temporarily) that void. For radical Islamists, the gross indulgence and excessive consumption of many of their county men is an insult to the tenets of their Prophet. In the eyes of many the West's consumerism is the corrupting evil.

And as the rich get increasingly richer, taking a greater and greater share of the cake, not through genius, hard work or endeavour but through brute economic bullying: one's sympathies with a more austere regime grow.