WATCH THE SKIES

The M25 on a Friday afternoon is traditionally gridlocked.

It’s not just traditional, it’s the law. Roads and Byelaws Act (1989) Clause 701 d)

“Though shalt cause gridlock on the M25 at all times of day and night, without reason or cause, without any possible means of exit, for periods of indeterminate time, so that all shall desire fervently to exist in any state that is not inside a car on the M25.”

It’s a little known law. So little known in fact that I just made it up. That’s how obscure it is. Only I know about it.

But that’s irrelevant. Consider why the M25 is jammed now, and not at other times.

It’s up there. Listen. Keep watching, keep looking at the skies. This is why the M25 is jammed. Stolen. Solid, like concrete. As if cars were poured onto the road and left to set.

You listen first. You hear it first. A roll of thunder, the sky undulating with the peal of noise, the roar of compressed air. All sound is energy condensed. This sound is energy unfolding. Spreading its wings over the length and breadth of the country.

INVISIBLE DEMONS

This invisible demon crawling over the sky, unseen, unknown. Somewhere our senses cannot detect. It’s reach faster than a mile every four seconds. A hand moving faster than a Boche fist extending over the channel in the opening credits of Dad’s Army, faster than a wave of darkness falling as the sun sets, faster than the rotation of the Earth.

In Concorde one could always experience daylight. One could look out of the windows in this tiny barrel of power and see permanent daylight. And 60,000 feet below, below a pillow of clouds, some far distant landmass.

And now, the final flights of the final three surviving Concordes.

Over the M25, these three sleek birds descend, hearses for the burial of supersonic flight.

A Concorde, immortal. Sleek lines that bely neither the age of it’s design, nor the age it survives within. Concorde looks as if it could have been designed today, or fifty years in the future. It looks as if it were designed by the props department on Star Wars.

I too mourn it’s passing. It’s mothballing. It’s final resting place, its last moments in flight.

Never again will I hear a dull roar and glance up to witness a small sleek triangle dividing the sky like a knife.

IT’S JUST A PLANE

Sure, one could say, it’s just a plane. Get over it. And yes, it is just a plane. And Star Wars is just a movie. And the Bible is just a fucking book. Get over that first and then come back to me, and I might take you seriously at that point.

Concorde is more than just a plane. It’s still, some thirty years since it’s maiden flight, some forty years since it was first an idea in the mind of a British scientist somewhere surrounded by grass and hills, it’s still the absolute pinnacle of human engineering. As beautiful as the Pyramids, as important as the invention of Electricity, as wonderful a feat of engineering as a Pentium processor or a heart valve.

Concorde invokes a sense of a time long past. A sense of a time that not only has long past, but may have never existed. A vision of Concorde reminds me of an age of international jetsetting playboys, of James Bond, of sleek Ferrari’s, of huge white mobile phones. Of the age of promise that we, as thirty somethings so very nearly had, as it was always just out of reach but always there for us if we could afford it.

I’ll never fly on a Concorde. In an age of Thatcherite economics, Blair’s government will be known as the government that killed Concorde. Far be it from me to get sentimental, but when The Brits do something, generally they don’t do a great job of it. The Brits invented cricket and someone else did a far better job, certainly at playing it, than they did. The Brits invented television (ok, the Scots did to get technical about it), and we don’t tend to do make the best programmes on television,

Not that being British counts for shit in my book. I think most people can see beyond the need to ally themselves to an outdated control concept of a nation, but nonetheless, I could feel, aside from the normal middle class guilt that comes with patriotism of any sort, I could feel some vague sense of pride that we made a sleek, beautiful supersonic jetliner that stood – and stands – at the front of engineering. A piece of engineering so efficient and perfect in design that it does not need half of the detritus that other designs need, no wasted parts, no sprockets, no spanners, no rings and tokens, so well designed it was that it is still ahead of its time now, despite being untouched by the ravages of time for three decades.

No. The thing that really gets me about the end of Concorde is much, much bigger than that. The need of Concorde is the first regressive step that mankind has made so far. The first time that we peeled back the barriers of technology back and decided not to continue to evolve. The first time that such frankly petty concerns of profit and commerce have dictated to us, limited human evolution, stunted our growth.

Not only is the Industrial revolution over, the Industrial Regression has begun. No longer will man seek to push forward boundaries, push limits. To see what we are truly capable of, not to try and raise the level of human experience, to try and increase the living standard for all of us.

Everything that is invented now, every discovery made everything that could increase the human experience is now analysed, controlled, assessed not for its ability to increase all our lives, but judged only on if someone can make money out of it.

That’s the only thing we care about now. Money. Profit. Power. That’s it. There is no more. That is the limit of our existence. All we do now, all mankind produces, is not geared toward saving lives, improving lives, or doing anything for the great good. No. Life saving drugs, energy systems that might save our ecosystem from toppling into collapse, anything that might ensure that we, mankind are not seen as the Great Cancer by future civilisations, are all debunked and rejected unless somewhere it can make some sad, pathetic bastard rich.

There is more to life than money. But try telling that the people who, by the million, are dying from the absolute cunting selfishness of major drugs companies. Try telling that to those who, by the million, are living lives in servitude and infection due to the dogmatic, outright lies of the Catholic church.

And so here it ends. Mankind will, when we have burnt every last drop of oil, eaten every last piece of food, and amused ourselves to death in extinctis, be seen by future civilisations as a scourge of the planet. A virus that multiplied itself to death. Ambition was great, achievements were great. Out stupidity was greater. And what is more dangerous than a dumb monkey with an enormous amount of power?

Whatever comes next, whatever evolves now, a race of insects with opposable thumbs, bipeds, who knows, but whatever it is, it can’t be as dangerous, as stupid, and as blindly ambitious as humans are.

Above me there will be no more Concordes. No more sleek, beautiful machines , no more graceful, gentle, beautiful birds falling to the ground. And whilst Concorde was determinedly retro, so very very seventies, what it’s demise tells us is more damning than anything. From here on, mankind will forever be travelling backwards, devolving, always, always, looking back. And never looking to the future.

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