Pulse

the last generation.’
    ‘What last generation?’
    ‘The last to use Latin tags. Sunt lacrimae rerum .’
    ‘Well, looking at the human animal and its historical track record, it’s perfectly possible we shan’t get out of this one. So – the last generation to have been truly careless, truly without care.’
    ‘I don’t know how you can say that. What about 9/11 and terrorism and Aids and …’
    ‘Swine flu.’
    ‘Yes, but they’re all local, and in the long run minor.’
    ‘In the long run we are all dead – now that was Keynes.’
    ‘What about dirty bombs and nuclear war in the Middle East?’
    ‘Local, local. What I was talking about was a sense that it’s all out of control, all too late, nothing we can do about it …’
    ‘Way past the tipping point …’
    ‘… and just as, in the past, people looked ahead and posited the rise of civilisation, the discovery of new continents, the understanding of the universe’s secrets, now we are looking at a vista of grand reversal and inevitable, spectacular decline, when homo will become a lupus to homini again. As in the beginning, so it was in the end.’
    ‘Blimey, you are in apocalyptic mode.’
    ‘But you said glamorous. What’s glamorous about the world burning up?’
    ‘Because you, we, had the world before it did so, or before we realised that it would do so. We’re like that generation which knew the world before 1914, only to the power of a thousand. From now on it’s all about – what’s that phrase? – managed decline.’
    ‘So you don’t recycle?’
    ‘Of course we do. I’m a good boy, like everyone else. But I quite see Nero’s point. May as well fiddle while Rome burns.’
    ‘Do we believe he did? Isn’t it like those famous sayings that nobody ever said?’
    ‘Is it? Weren’t there eyewitness accounts of Nero fiddling? Suetonius, as it were?’
    ‘ Res ipsa loquitur .’
    ‘Tony, that’s enough.’
    ‘I didn’t know they had violins in Ancient Rome.’
    ‘Joanna, at last a pertinent observation.’
    ‘Isn’t Stradivarius an old Roman name? Sounds like one.’
    ‘Isn’t it amazing how much we don’t know?’
    ‘Or how much we know but how little we believe.’
    ‘Who was it said they had strong opinions weakly held?’
    ‘Give up.’
    ‘I don’t know either, I just remembered it.’
    ‘You know, our council has actually started to employ recycling snoopers. Can you imagine that?’
    ‘Not until you tell us what they do.’
    ‘They come round looking at your recycling bins and check if you’re recycling enough of something –’
    ‘They actually come on to your property? I’d sue the buggers for trespass.’
    ‘… and then if, say, they find you haven’t put out enough tins, they’ll shove a leaflet through the door explaining how to pull your socks up.’
    ‘Bloody cheek. Why not spend the money on extra nurses or something?’
    ‘That’s what it’ll come to in Apocalyptic Britain. Snoopers breaking down your front door to see if you’ve left your telly on standby.’
    ‘They wouldn’t find many tins in our recycling, because we hardly buy any. Most of it’s far too high in salt and preservatives and so on.’
    ‘Ah, but when the snoopers get to work on you, you’ll be buying tins and chucking away the contents so you can keep up your recycling quota.’
    ‘Couldn’t they replace snoopers with extra surveillance cameras?’
    ‘Aren’t we getting off the point?’
    ‘What’s new about that?’
    ‘Stradivari.’
    ‘I beg your pardon.’
    ‘Stradivarius is the instrument, Stradivari the maker.’
    ‘Fine by me. Absolutely fine.’
    ‘When I was young, I used to hate the way the world was governed by old men, because they were obviously out of touch and mired in history. Now the politicians are all so bloody young they’re out of touch in a different way, and I don’t so much hate it as fear it, because they can’t possibly understand enough about the world.’
    ‘When I was young, I liked short books. Now I’m older, and there’s less time left, I find I prefer long books. Can anyone explain that?’
    ‘Animal self-delusion. One part of you pretending that there’s more time than there really is.’
    ‘When I was young and started listening to classical music, I used to prefer the fast movements and was bored by the slow movements. I just wanted them to be over. Now it’s the opposite. I prefer slow movements.’
    ‘That’s probably connected to the blood