Oh the hell of being middle class. Driven by guilt we are. As if there wasn’t enough in the world to be feeling genuinely tortured about, we seem to thrive on creating extra reasons to flagellate ourselves — regardless, sometimes, of logic or evidence.
There’s the guilt about driving the wrong car — until it turns out that green cars, from inception to scrap yard, can be more environmentally hostile than a Chelsea tractor. There’s the guilt about using the wrong nappies — until it turns out that washing recyclable nappies could use up more of the earth’s resources than using disposable ones. And then there’s the guilt about non-organic food, most especially when it comes to feeding — or rather poisoning — our children.
The Food Standards Agency, having examined the evidence, does not yet accept that organic food is any healthier than its non-organic equivalent. Meanwhile, its nationwide inquiry into food fraud, we learnt last week, has uncovered an industry riddled with sharp practice and Jesuitical labelling.
Not only have we been taking it on trust that organic food is better for us; it turns out we’ve been taking it on trust that it’s organic food at all. It can cost as much as five times the price of ordinary food and yet sales are rising by 12% every year. Why — do we all have money to burn?
I don’t believe there is any rationale to it really. I think that when people buy organic it’s a purely emotional thing: an all-purpose placebo to keep any number of middle-class anxieties at bay. Pay a little extra for those chemical-free vegetables and hey, maybe the children do watch too much television, maybe I needn’t have used the car this morning . . . but dammit, these vegetables are so expensive they must be doing us good. At least I’m doing something right.
Look around. We have a population with a life expectancy verging towards treble figures. More or less. People — and not just the organic-eating classes — are growing faster, taller and stronger every year; our babies are born healthier; our children by and large are thriving. If we are what we eat then clearly we’ve been doing something right for some time — since long before this new organic explosion.
A woman I know recently invited her son’s six-year-old friend over for supper. After accepting the invitation, the friend’s mother proceeded to give a long list of the things the boy wouldn’t eat — including pizzas, burgers and chips, so she was obviously lying. Then she said, with a slightly mad, hysterical giggle, “And of course, I mean, we all eat organic, don’t we?” My friend’s response was a lot more polite than mine would have been.
There is something vaguely disgusting about the modern obsession with healthy eating when so much of the world is starving. Whether or not organic food proves to be better in long run, I think — for the sake of good taste if for nothing else — that it’s time we all learnt to be be a bit cooler.
After all, we face a neverending stream of health warnings and health scares and we should have learnt by now that they never come to much. We have not been wiped out by BSE. We were not wiped out by Edwina Currie’s salmonella and we won’t be wiped out by this week’s salmonella scare either. Avian flu scared the living daylights out of us but it never came to much. In any case the sad fact is, somehow or other, death will come even to the children of the middle classes. Even if they are fed organic.
oMiddle-aged conservatives have to put themselves somewhere beyond their own precious gardens, poor things, especially at this time of year. Now it appears that even our wonderful public libraries are being advised to distance themselves from that most despised, unwanted sector of society.
Alex Aiken, head of communications for Westminster council, has told a conference of public library authorities that in order to escape unwelcome associations with middle-aged conservatism, libraries need to have a serious think about their public image.
What they need, he has suggested, in order to “counter outmoded perceptions” is to ban the word “librarian”, because of its unarguably frumpy connotations; to make a special effort in promoting the “racier” novels, and to employ better-looking staff.
Sigh. I’m not sure what he hopes to achieve by any of it.
As the author of numerous racy novels myself I can’t complain when he suggests that librarians — c’est-à-dire Community Literacy-Sharing Sexpot Officers — make an effort to promote them. Except, to be fair, they already do. Judging by the statements I receive from the Public Lending Right, racy novel borrowing is doing a roaring trade. The Sexpot Officers, bless them, are doing an excellent job.
But even if they were not, Aiken seems to be missing the point. Raciness is a wonderful thing. As, indeed, are adorable receptionists. But there is nothing to be gained from beguiling a goofy, glamour-hungry crowd into a library with the promise of a sexual fizz, when they will only wind up disappointed. Occasionally unpleasant truths just have to be faced and the fact is that there are some places (fewer and fewer, actually) where the Lowest Common Denominator is not going feel at home. A library, by its nature, is one of them. Why waste everybody’s time by pretending otherwise?
My perception of a library — don’t know about yours — is that it’s a quiet place filled with books, where people go to read. A haven, in this mad, noisy, mendacious world, where we can simply sit and sleep, if our heating bills are upsetting us; or even, if we prefer it, to er. You know. Do a little research. Learn some stuff. Grotesquely unglamorous, I agree. But occasionally useful and sometimes — here’s the thing, Aiken, brace yourself — even quite fun.
Alex Aiken worries, and rightly, about the steady fall in library usage in Britain. It is one of many examples of the growing mental sloth of the population, but it seems to me that it’s not the libraries that would benefit from a shake-up; rather more, it’s the people who can’t be fagged to use them.
Libraries don’t need a change of image. Their image is spot on. What libraries need is pretty much what they already have: books and desks, intelligent librarians, long opening hours and plenty of places to plug a computer in.
Having said that, any readers who do happen to be in search of a place where books and sexpots gather together should take a trip to the humanities reading room at the British Library. I spend weeks on end in there (writing my racy novels). God knows why, but it’s almost always packed with mysteriously good-looking men.
