Bloglag

So much for the good intentions to keep my blog up-to-date. When I started, I aimed to free the time and clear the space but I have been busy being busy.

Although the dust has settled on our recent air travel disruption, I now find myself sitting in Edinburgh airport. My flight to Belfast has been delayed. What better time and place to deal with the bloglag and get up to date?

Much has happened since my last post, including a visit to the French Ambassador’s Residence in London for an award ceremony; a long overdue first visit to the Wallace Collection in Hertford House, Sir Richard's London home; afternoon tea in the Merchant Hotel, Belfast; a sumptuous dinner in the Signet Library in Parliament Square, Edinburgh and a visit to the National Gallery of Scotland to take in its impressionist and dance exhibitions.

Listing the experiences doesn’t get me off my self-imposed hook though and so the sequence above is a declaration of blog intent to write and post material in that order.

I give myself a week. If I run I might just stand still.

Humanity in the frame

When I was asked recently to attend a seminar in Warwick University I agreed readily. I knew the venue, the Scarman Conference Centre, having been there once before. I recalled a picture I had seen on my first visit. It had made an impression on me then that has stayed with me ever since. I hoped that there would be space in the day to see it again. I was pleased to see that it was still there, displayed in the main hospitality area.

It is a study for a final portrait of Lord Scarman painted by the artist Tom Phillips.

Lord Scarman died in 2004 at the age of 93. He is remembered for presiding over the enquiry into the Brixton Riots of 1981 but I recall his earlier visit to Belfast in 1969 when he had conducted an enquiry into an aspect of our own “Troubles”.

The study for the portrait – I have not yet seen the final - conveys to me a sense of: Sharpness. Flint. Alertness. Decision.

Around the perimeter framing the image is a set of words, quoted from Thomas Paine’s On the Rights of Man. I think these must have been a motto for Scarman and they certainly speak to today when some legal decisions are openly criticised as out of touch, mistaken or misunderstood. Paine wrote, “I had rather record a thousand errors inspired by humanity than one dictated by a justice too severe”.

I like that humanity motive.

I like the idea of taking the time to get things right. The artist completed a study for his final portrait - thinking about it? Getting it right?

I like considered, reflective and wise judgements and get worried when I hear or read opinion formers calling for retribution in response to some high profile crime.

Cool heads are needed, not knee-jerk reactions that could lead to a justice too severe.