Evans Unleashed

Often when I run around the park, I see people walking their dogs. Many of these dogs are unleashed. This isn't really an issue, thankfully, as most of these dogs tend to be small and unthreatening. They're not the sort of dog who will become a news story after mistaking a 3-year old child for a snack.

And 3-year olds were precisely what I saw a few days ago, also in the park. They were from the local nursery, and there were about sixteen of them, being walked along by four teachers. I say 'teachers', I doubt they were going through a GCSE syllabus, but I can not think of a better name to call them. How nice for the children to be getting some fresh air in a park as pleasant as St. Anne's Well Gardens rather than being stuck in a stuffy, artificially-heated little nursery hall. However, then I saw something very sinister. No, it wasn't a paedophile lurking in the bushes. I noticed that the children were on leads. They were literally, being walked along by the teachers. Each lead had around eight children. Let me draw a diagram to demonstrate.

(from bird's eye view)

...T
c-|-c
c-|-c
c-|-c
c-|-c

T = teacher, c = child
- and | represent the rope system by which the children were constrained

I'd never seen anything like this before.

I know it was common in the past to have elasticated reins to stop children from venturing too far from their mothers, but at least these were individual and still allowed some room for manoeuvre. Having the children constrained as a group with virtually no room for manoeuvre seemed very strange, as if a lazy form of mass-parenting. One wonders how the children will ever grow up if they are constrained in such a manner. Perhaps it will become customary. Maybe in the future a new metaphor will be introduced to the English language: "having one's harness removed". This will mean the same as "taking away the training wheels" means today.

Perhaps it would be better for our society... if our dogs were on leashes, and our children were left free.

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Returning to the title. It isn't just for the sake of a pun. It's because I will be writing opinions on some things which matter, rather than park politics. I have some books I shall be reviewing, along with some epic documentaries my brother has fed me. I will try to be honest in my thoughts. If I end up writing things which are somehow controversial (amongst the... two people who read this blog) or have not been said before, it is not out of any particular desire to be controversial or original. I will simply be writing what I think.

Books
Stanislaw Lem - The Star Diaries
Jonathan Swift - Gulliver's Travels

Documentaries
Jakob Bronowski - The Ascent of Man
Carl Sagan - Cosmos
James Burke - Connections
Alistair Cooke - America

...as well as few other, shorter programmes or one offs, that have made an impression on me, however slight.

I don't think this has been a very good blog post. The language has been rather lazy, and I have used italics far too frequently, as if that would somehow compensate for the laziness of what has been written. And I use the word 'lazy' twice in two sentences, as if I could not be bothered to think of a synonym. Still, at least I've made the effort to actually finish all the sentences that