RIP Kirk Douglas: here is something i wrote last year and meant to post on this blog:

How, many little feet – will change our world.

Aswell as working in the fields, on our farm, and working on a farmer’s market stall at weekends, selling our produce; i sometimes help do deliveries. I mainly deliver to restaurants and delis, in London and sometimes Kent. I spend many hours in the driving seat, and get to see alot of London, and many people going about their business, going to work, shopping, taking children to school, and home again and…

Well, one day recently i passed an orderly line of children, walking to school, all wearting hi-viz jackets and doing a pretty good job of marching in time. They were escorted by adults leading, in the middle, and at the rear, keeping the children in formation as the eager kids smiled,chattered, and swung their arms, and hit their feet in great high steps – much like soldiers do.

The scene reminded me of the classic 1960s film, Spartacus – starring Kirk Douglas, among many great actors. There is one scene in the film, where Laurence Olivier, the great English movie and Shakesperian actor, is addressing his companion, as they watch from their House in Rome, lines of Roman soldiers marching out of the city. Olivier played a famous Roman Senator/general and he made a speech, along the lines of: “See those soldiers” (and the legions of Rome who were marching off to war), “that is Rome – that is the might/the power of Rome… ” Well the film ends badly for the hero Spartacus, as the ‘might of Rome’ crushed him and his slave army, who had rebelled against their old masters, and the City and Republic of Rome.

Back to our little line of primary school children, who were marching through the streets of London. At the time, i thought: ” ‘Here’ is the next generation, the real power of Rome.” Fit to conquer any army sent against them. These little feet will be the ones filling the next generation of bankers shoes, and politicians, and inventors, and farmers.
As i sat down to write this, i imagined the power of the Roman Republic, which became an Empire, and was maybe seen by many as an unjust tyranny, just as it was for others a bringer of peace and civilization. Today many see the same tyranny and corruption in our great corporations, and institutions of our Capitalist community. One day, as ever, the shoes of today’s corporate heads, and bankers and policy makers will be filled by a new Legion of feet. This, maybe rather long-winded, analogy (although i hope it conveys my meaning ) was what i thought at the time, and made me smile with hope for the future. Our current empire of supermarket chains, and chemical laden agricultural practice, and even our culture of food, which has evolved over thousands of years, is in the hands of those little legions, and they will not be forced like their forebears to make do with limited choice and limited know how. We, the human race; now has the choice of what we would like our future agriculture, food culture, and health habits, (what it means to be a normal healthy Human Being) should and can be: right now.