Royalty and Reality
by Patrick Field
Henry Ford, inventor of
the production-line, famously declared that 'history is a bunk'; meaning --
I think -- that history is a subject unworthy of consideration, or rather was
a subject unworthy of consideration. Unlike Mr. Ford, Cycling Sideways believes
in the value of studying history. Knowledge of the past helps us to understand
the present and plan to make best use of the future. And, in CS's tradition
of stating the obvious, let us never forget that the future is all that we have
left.
As CS predicted in January 1994 (you heard it here first kids) the heir apparent
to the Norman crown, the wanna-be Charles the III, is to divorce. Whether you
consider this happenstance a tragedy, a farce or less interesting than the size
and condition of the steel-balls in the pedals of your least-loved bike, it
is undoubtedly an historically resonant event.
The sordid details of the Charles and Diana story (£10,000 a year on therapy?
That's more than I spend on bikes.) are taken as examples of aberrant behaviour
that sets the latest generation of the British ruling dynasty apart from their
sober and dutiful forbears. This interpretation cannot withstand historical
analysis. The Kings and Queens of England used their wealth and influence to
indulge in all manner of excesses. It was Albert, Victoria's Consort who redefined
the monarch as servant of the State. It is the austere crop of figure-heads
conforming to the Victorian model who are exceptional. The, mostly frivolous,
upcoming generation are closer to regal tradition. Their problem is that contemporary
mass-communication allows access to the mundane detail of their lives. Nobody's
life stays heroic under such close scrutiny.
It is interesting to speculate why the clan chose to forego the theatre, the
brothel, the banquet and the binge, to abstain from the kind of fast living
which had been the family norm since their armoured ancestors grabbed the country
in 1066. During the Nineteenth Century they were haunted by memories of the
French Revolution, later the collapse of the German, Austro-Hungarian and Russian
Imperial houses made them shy of high-profile, lavish living. On the first (slightly
out of date) World maps I ever saw, half the land was coloured pink. Jurisdiction
over an Empire was a further pressure on British Monarchs to behave in a deserving
and responsible manner, but the strange concept of the hard-working monarch
was mostly a product of the new industrial age.
It was in the Victorian era that work became sanctified,when the getting of
wealth became more worthy and important than dispensing and enjoying it. This
was an age when 'progress' was something in which everyone believed, a time
when it was anticipated that the miracles of science and technology would set
humanity free from animal existence. A monarch living a fantasy life of luxury
on our behalf was redundant. A life of fantastic luxury was waiting for us,
or for our children, just a few short years ahead. The dream of paradise through
progress peaked in the 1960's, as Harold Wilson discussed the white-heat of
the technological revolution over a cup of tea with George Best and the Beatles
at Number Ten, and Neil Armstrong played hopscotch on the moon. No one peeled
potatoes or did the washing on the Starship Enterprise. Life was pressing buttons
and boldly going.
The dream of progress always had a nightmare element. Dark satanic mills, Gettysberg
and the Somme, asbestosis, the Nazi Holocaust, Hiroshima, Bhopal and Chernobyl.
At Yom Kippur 1973 a short War in the Middle-East revealed that the edifice
of progress rested on shaky geo-political foundations. The price of gasoline
quadrupled in a few months. Having just passed my driving test I took it personally.
When I was young people still used to say that 'the best things in life are
free', today no one ever does. Now it is understood that the best things in
life -- fresh air, clean water, countryside, dark skies, starlight, happy families,
love -- are priceless. The world of work and money is no longer separate from
these precious commodities. It threatens their existence.
Its nice to have a purpose, a reason to get out of bed before noon but work
is not a condition of life. We must look at the costs as well as the rewards
of encouraging people to define their identities and derive their sense of self-worth
only from their occupations.
As the dream of a technological future turns sour, the appetite for contemporary
fantasy returns; witness, double-roll-over Lottery fever. Relationships fail
for many reasons but part of Charles' and Diana's mismatch is that in 1973 he
was an adult and she a child. Charles, with his organic farms, model villages
and dull adultery with frumpy housewife is still striving to be a worker-monarch
in Wellington boots. Diana who dallies with super-star athletes, appears mysteriously
at the bed-sides of the dying, wants to be 'Queen
of Hearts'; to reinvent herself as a demi-goddess for the post-industrial age.
As the mechanical wonders of the 19th Century fall out of use (Cut to wide-shot
of piles of discarded motion-picture cameras then pan round to reveal a stack
of typewriters with weeds growing out of them.) the bicycle remains to reunify
our lives; to remind us that machines work and people live. On a bike you understand
that technology makes life easier but that it can never change the physical
limits of existence. In pictures Charles never looks comfortable on a bike,
like everything else he does it seems to be a duty rather than a pleasure. As
Diana selects a ride profile on the L.E.D. display of a state-of-the-art exercise
bike at the Chelsea Harbour Gym does she yearn for the open-road? The tag 'bicycle
riding monarchy' is used as a faintly derogatory short-hand for the low-rent
royal houses of the Netherlands and Scandinavia. Royalist and republican, sympathiser
and sceptic should agree that, had the players in our own sorry soap (Dynasty?)
spent more time riding their bikes, they would have evolved a more harmonious
existence for themselves and perhapseven for the institution they personify.
Incidentally Henry Ford also said "The most beautiful things in the world are
those from which all excess weight has been eliminated." He's history.
© Patrick Field
Cycling & Mountain Biking Today, May 1996