I was never a big fan of Southampton growing up. It was just grey after living in Deutschland and it wasn't very friendly either.
After the Wirtschaftwunder (Economic Miracle) of living in Germany, a synthetic creation much as British food-stamps were to last long after the war years..... if you get my drift.
Japan and Germany were hit hardest so it's karmically in the controllers favour to rebuild them quickest, while Great Britain was reduced to years of poverty and decline, for essentially provoking war (for those who have read the focus group papers.)
However, my return to Southampton in 2017 has been a renaissance experience for this port city, that was so gritty growing up in the 80s. It's now one of my favourite places and I feel an ease in this city that I've rarely experienced elsewhere.
That is to say, after much exploring and history research, I know this place and because there have been so many changes, it strikes me somewhat as more of a journey partner than a destination. The much maligned Southampton City Council have done a very competent job of upgrading the city and marina areas.
I talked in the last post (Part I), about the commitment from the City council to electric scooters which is easily the most transformative step a city can make for unleashing the freedom of travelling electrically on widely available racks of scooters, distributed around the city and not just in the centre.
In addition, Southampton has attracted a strong and vibrant ethnic mix of immigrants. I'm lucky where I live. St Mary (please note that's singular and an uncountable noun) is both right on the hotspot of that cultural diversity including a strong Hong Kong contingent, Portuguese, Turkish, Somalian, Romanian and on and on it goes, all equally identifiable by their clothes and appearance and adjacent to some awesome greenery.
I'm slap bang in the middle of one of the most interesting neighbourhoods in the city, but also I'm right next to the public parks, of which Southampton has some of the best in the country. It's probably the most consistently relaxing place I can think of other than living on a tropical beach in Jomtien or a particular pub I used to frequent in Freemantle, which irrespective of how tough a day I'd had was a gravity-free experience entering... through the doors and being transported to an island of relaxation, leaving the outside world behind.
I want to elaborate about ethnic and cultural diversity though.
I'm very aware of the long term plans for humanity. They are laid out in the winner of the first Charlemagne prize (that Churchill won twice) Count Couldenhove Kalergi.
The most racist people I know are invariably indoctrinated politically, and who can't wait for a regimented mullato (I love coffee-coloured skin) species (Kalergi's words not mine) with fewer languages, one religion; genderless yet stunning and brave, and also the creation of an insect worker... as adumbrated in Huxley's brave new world; men breast feeding babies, lesbians having to accept male penis and so forth is a reality, not wild histrionics.
... and before you invoke the rainbow. It belongs to everyone, including heterosexuals, the working classes, the upper classes, the pious, uncouth, male or female, Asian or not. The rainbow was bestowed on all of us not a radical and toxically empowered clique who are waay more powerful and rewarded in kind, than most have yet to be "caught-on-to", but some, most certainly will if sentient of change.
You see what makes for attractive racial diversity are the differences not the uniformity of the human genome. When I go to Japan, I don't want to see Chinese people, I want to be able to distinguish between the Asian races (for example) which is not as hard as it seems to people who haven't travelled widely in that neck of the woods. There was a time in Bangkok where we could tell which towns the females (they were always females) came from. Nakhon Si Thammarat to Songkhla, Pitsanulouk to Udon Thani. It's one of the most fun party tricks to play in the red light districts of go go bars and neon.
What the social engineers and multi generational planners want and are now destroying with cancel culture and synthetic racism through BLM is the real diversity of the human story which of course from time to time has been nothing to boast about, particularly when thinking of Empire and the stooges that now endorse the CIA running for Congress, and SIS transgender credentials while ignoring the heinous behaviour they partake in. Email me if you have a strong stomach and the courage of your convictions to contest me. I can't post here.
Back to beauty and happiness though. Recently I came across a beguiling voice in podcasts that I found magnetic and also interested in some of the ideas I'm engaged with and writing about here. We were the same age (52) and had some crossover in our lives as we both lived in Belsize Park, London back in the day at around the same period, and we also both worked in the media business. I as an advertising prostitute and he as a Channel 4 honcho. I googled his name and discovered that he had died only days ago. The last time that happened to me was when I reading Marlon Brando's biography in Bangkok where I learned that he too had croaked. It's quite a poignant feeling when immersing ourselves in famous lives.
Well Jonathan Myles Lea has passed too, and anyone with an ounce of sense can see that what he fought for was beauty and the aesthetic, instead of the rancid blue haired, septum pierced obesity with tattoos who think anything vagina shaped is art.
They are brainwashed, and they have been given license to run the most powerful institutions in the UK from the Foreign Office to Stonewall and Terrence Higgins Trust. They are women haters and insist any Lesbian who refuses to consider a trans relationship is a TERF, a trans exclusionary radical feminist. Well I tell you something blue haired brigade cheerleaders. You too will have to accept and respect the cock (and tame the cunt) when your time comes. This has been, and always will be about male violence. Don't think a wearing a dress is going changes the insides of misogyny.
Anyway, I've clearly wrapped two posts together. One about truth and beauty, and the other about a world which is a threat to that and no amount of running away from the bad news can change it.
I wouldn't want to live in very big cities in the coming years. The poor will be ransacking the not so poor.
I've got a very good feeling Southampton is going to be in better shape, and that makes me cheerful.