Reminiscences of The Lost World

I was reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle lately and it set me thinking. Is the spirit of our times coming full circle? Nigel Farage in the footsteps of George Edward Challenger? You know, the guy who said:

The natives were Cucuma Indians, an amiable but degraded race, with mental powers hardly superior to the average Londoner.

I dare say so. But the poor woman worrying about the people of Bulgaria might have appeared a little more informed, had she not fallen victim to politically correct speech. Why is it that we can't help the nation of Bulgaria to prosperity? Well, that is, because the problem with Bulgarians is in fact a problem with Gypsies and Bulgarians don't think about changing the situation of their Gypsies for the better.

Actually, the heart of the whole matter is that South-eastern Europe has been governed so sluggishly during the last centuries that it allowed the Gypsies there to prosper in their traditional ways. A kind of a nature reserve.

Although this might read as if I'd take pleasure in this peculiar sort of a half amiable look down upon the innocent creatures whose brains have so badly been mistreated during their formative years, that is not really so.

But perhaps that's just me. There was the Britain of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. There was the Britain of the Beatles. There is the Britain of political correctness.

I am a plumber with a rising business, Escott, by name. I have walked out with her each evening, and I have talked with her. Good heavens, those talks!

Why would any animal feel the need to change its nature? What was enjoyable then, should, as it would seem, be enjoyable now.

It should actually be even more enjoyable, a more docile, more tender form of stupidity to feed upon. Not the clumsy inventions of materialistic minds, but the pure fabrications of would be relief workers untarnished by experience.

You can almost feel the cannibalistic pleasure.

Then it was a matter of convention rooted in former necessity, which began to break up in the wake of the industrial age. And today it's the choice of the people.

But the British are only first to go home, others will follow.