Opening Ceremony
So, the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games is to feature the British Countryside and ‘Shakespeare’! A countryside that vast numbers of our population never see as they can’t afford to visit it let alone explore it. A countryside where small farmers struggle to exist while the supermarkets make a fortune from selling their produce. A countryside where huge investment companies and the agro/chemical companies create vast fields devoid of wild life as they cut down the ancient hedgerows to make space for their efficient machines.
Secondly “All hail Shakespeare” as part of the theme! Let’s be honest most people haven’t heard of Shakespeare and couldn’t give a stuff; at best he might have been something to endure for a brief period at school during English Literature lessons. Yes he was a brilliant play write 100′s of years ago but totally irrelevant and incomprehensible to most of us. Anyone would think we haven’t produced another brilliant writer since then. God alone knows how much it cost but the organisers have commissioned the casting of a bell for the ceremony that is twice the weight of Big Ben and inscribed with a phrase from The Tempest “ ”Be not afeard, the isle is full of noises”! FFS! The rest of the World will think we are stuck in the past which of course we are, at least, those who tend to rise to the top of the pile are.
Quite agree about the agrochemical issue and industrial farming but horrified at your attitude to Shakespeare. My adoptive granddaughter has been exploring the Bard in her performing arts course at Cornwall College. She thinks it’s awesome. Trouble is that, as with poetry, our education system has served us very poorly with its emphasis on exam results. I’ve got a cracking Bluray of Hamlet with David Tennant as a very convincing Prince and Patrick Stewart as the ghost and Claudius which you are most welcome to invite yourself over to enjoy. If your jaw doesn’t drop then you have no soul.