Marketing met manipulation when the Freud family got involved. (Watch “The Century of the Self” which documents how citizens were turned into consumers deliberately by the relatives and disciples of Sigmund Freud). Before the 1940’s “marketing” meant – taking to market, rather than the application of slick psychology to create desire for profit.

Here’s a particularly dreadful example. I received a text on my phone today saying “We have been trying to contact you regarding your PPI Claim, we now have details of how much you are due, just reply POST and we will post you a pack out”. I was intrigued. I am not due any PPI claim, so I responded.

Within 30 minutes I had a marketing call on my mobile phone. The telephonists asked me for my details. It turned out they didn’t know who I was, it was just a fishing exercise. This is when manipulation turns straightway into lying. When shameless meets shameful.

As you walk into Paddington Station in London you see a Victorian shield with the mottos of the Great Western Railway. “Domine dirige nos” and “Virtute et industrial”. Now it’s a long time since my Latin lessons but I’m guessing that is something like “the Lord directs us” and “virtue and work”.
It may have been true of Victorian Britain, indeed I have read that unlike the Dickensian depiction, poverty was substantially less common than now. In any event, is it true now? Certainly in the 1980’s in my early career contracts were built on relationships, fuelled of course by alcohol. (Working lunch by another name). The lubricant now appears to be greed and the cult of “winning”. Is there virtue underpinning British industry? A glance at the “rich list” in last Sunday’s newspapers features fortunes made by Russian oligarchs (whose money is that then?), property tycoons, landed gentry, gambling empires and hedge funds. 

All a long way from Brunel, that greatest of British inventors and engineers who was the inspiration of the Great Western Railway.

For my Beamish Boy on his 24th Birthday..

Smile and the world smiles upon you

In mirrored reflection of joy

Words weighted and precious as dew

From you then, as a boy

 

Supple-muscled lithesome and deft

Your kindness unfolding to strength

Your life an high arc-flighted ball

Both the speed and the length

 

Your mouth-curving happiness gifts

Quick flowing compassion for all

A tide-race of laughter that lifts

Smallness up to be tall

 

Rythmic and upbeat engagement

Your motto “We will, and we can”

Scottish Bass Rock protectively

Noble you gentle-fine-man

As we walked out that golden afternoon

Toward the lighthouse, brisk o’er skyward road

The isle arose from bed of cirrus brume

Haar-spun candyfloss of light bestrowed

Melting butter incense scented gorse

The watchful pines conspir’d in secrecy

Disporting hares’ balletic spring discourse

Construed your nature’s green-fused ecstasy

Stepp’d you light through dunes to surf’s samphire sand

Sun crowned halo loosed hair engarlanded

Sea-flensed bottle strewn sapphire scattered strand

Whence garnered sea -cleansed shells sleight-handed

My evanescent love, my April show’r

Foregathered here-by thy dominions pow’r

(Note to self)

Ego is a confection. Candyfloss spun by my mind; tastes sweet but the price is loneliness. Sad because false; my “self” is a prison I build all by my self. Death only exists for my ego. Without it (in every sense) I  truly live. Live truly.

As we walked out to Ailsa,
That golden afternoon
The isle arising cirrus,
Spun candyfloss and brume

“To The Lighthouse” drew us through,
Butter-innocence scent gorse
watchful pine above the green.
Saw coursing hare’s discourse

Stepping light to limpid shore,
Your haloed hair Aurora
Sea cleansed limpets flensed to crowns,
Cockle shelled corona

Through tufted dunes sand-sliding,
Up secret smugglers path
We turned toward sun setting,

Tea laid at Ailsa’s hearth

This could have been called To The Lighthouse or Easster Rising. It attempts to describe the magic of an Easter afternoon shared, carved out of time, with my daughter.