The Other Side Of The Mirror

There has been a Lewis Carroll 'Alice' feel to the past few weeks, and that sensation peaked in recent days. One of my favourite albums is 'The Other Side of the Mirror' by Stevie Nicks, which has a 'two lives one on either side of the looking glass' theme, so perhaps that put this concept into my mind. A number of events and situations have reinforced it.

This week has seen a large influx of foreign tourists to London, all driving around in long convoys of large black armour plated cars. They had come here to attend a series of meetings aimed at tackling the current economic problems which are exercising a vice-like grip on our plans and our wallets. We the general populace have been vouchsafed broadcasts on TV of Mr Obama's triumphant progress through London, his car punctuated to the front and the rear by a cavalcade of other vehicles and motorcycle outriders. The Heads of State of other G20 countries went to Buckingham Palace for drinkies with Her Majesty the Queen and Prince Philip, and our Head of State told off the Italian Head of State for being too loud. A video of the event became a big hit on Youtube. A sumptuous dinner at 10 Downing Street (cooked by Jamie Oliver just ahead of his wife giving birth) rounded off the day's activities.

Then the next morning we were treated to motorcade after motorcade arriving at the Excel exhibition centre in the Docklands - all conveying Heads of State and their entourages to the G20 summit. It was pomp, circumstance carefully stage managed to emphasise power and convey an aura of glamour. Mr Obama and his wife left from Stansted Airport post-summit on their jumbo jet, the big cars were loaded into another jumbo jet, Mrs Clinton and her entourage installed themselves in another aeroplane and Air Force One with its winged acolytes headed off, with much theatre, to Strasbourg where more pomp and circumstance awaited them.

On the other side of the mirror, people are being thrown out of their jobs in frighteningly large numbers, companies are folding (often in a domino effect with one insolvency bringing on more). Homes are being lost, and so is hope. What of the people who got us into this situation through speculation, greed, arrogance and through emphasising maximum short-term gain for the few over the creation of sustainable businesses giving employment to many? They sit on their sizable asset bases with steady income streams flowing in, leaving them untroubled by the worries of much of the population. It certainly looks like the realm of the mad hatter, and the madness does not seem to have left our leaders if this week's incongruous display of wealth and power is any indication. Time will tell whether this summit has produced anything more than good theatre and hot air.

There have been other elements of watching two sides of a mirror, more to do with radically different accounts of the same situation, given from radically different perspectives, and impossible to tell where the truth and reality lays, but that is on a more personal level and I won't go into that here.

Today's bicycle ride took me past the new Lewis Carroll library, not far from Kings Cross. Notwithstanding the massive regeneration programme for which the new Channel Tunnel terminal was the catalyst, and the proximity of well-heeled Islington, this sparkling new library serves a very deprived area. Nevertheless, whenever I have passed it, the library seems to be very busy. So perhaps, on this other side of the mirror, the people are being educated, stimulated and developed who can lead us out of the land of the mad hatter, and into better times. Or even better, these are growing pains of the new global society, and things will be better long before the children who use the new Lewis Carroll library are heading for university.

Lewis Carroll Children's Library:
http://www.islington.gov.uk/education/libraries/local/Lewis_Carroll_Childrens_Library.asp

Lewis Carroll Society:
http://lewiscarrollsociety.org.uk/index.html

The Other Side of the Mirror (Stevie Nicks):
http://nicksfix.com/tosotmalb.htm

• The pictures accompanying this piece show a new development close to the new Lewis Carroll Library, the Regents Canal passing through the rather broken down area around Kings Cross which is currently being redeveloped, and the entrance to the Lewis Carroll Children's Library (photographs must not be reproduced without permission).