Afternoon:
10°c
I was in Sicily over the weekend and visited the celebrated Capuchin catacombs, where the imperfectly preserved corpses of the 19th-century middle class of Palermo are strung up along the walls. Most disturbing are the children, the tiny skeletons clad in tattered lace. Most upsetting of all, though, was the extremely well-preserved corpse of two-year-old Rosalia Lombardo, admitted to the catacombs in 1920. Thanks to modern embalming techniques, she now resides in a wooden cot, under glass, her long blonde hair tied up in a yellow bow, apparently peacefully asleep.
My city break coincided with the Baby P case hitting the headlines. In truth, I knew it was happening even as I boarded the Stansted Express, yet couldn't bear to read the coverage. I suspect any parent of small children - and I've had four - found the catalogue of sadism and neglect sickening to digest, and not because we're necessarily sensitised any more than those without them to the feelings of children. No, we're only too aware of how ambivalent our own feelings can be: we get stressed, we feel angry, we snap, we smack. No parent is perfect - the most we can aspire to is being good enough.
I'm not indulging in special pleading for those responsible for Baby P's death, nor do I think that any social workers found to have failed to act in time should be exonerated. For this to happen in Haringey - the same borough where Victoria Climbié was starved and beaten to death only eight years ago - is a grotesque indictment. That the whistleblower should've been hounded by the social services department through employment tribunals beggars belief. That still others should point to the increased costs of bringing care order cases before the courts as a determining factor is almost as nauseating as the catalogue of Baby P's abuse.
Around all of this swirls our own fears and doubts: that anyone can be a good enough parent, especially if they're plainly unfit to look after themselves. It isn't supported by any waking reality, only by the suppressed nightmare of our own hugely imperfect care system. Those who bay for at-risk kids to be sent into care should properly recognise that "care" is often just another term for "at risk" in a different setting. Nor will some Cameroonian state-supported marital harmony stop more Baby Ps in the future. The only way we can do that is to recognise exactly how dreadful the conditions under which this child lived and died actually were, and to commit ourselves, as a society and as individuals, to changing them once and for all.
Rosalia is a vision of childhood perfection, perversely preserved under glass for ever; the gut-wrenching accounts of Baby P's very imperfect and hideously truncated childhood are the very opposite. We owe it to him to ensure that we look long and hard at them.
Hard times get Hirst going
My old mucker Damien Hirst is wearing the recession well. After his somewhat portentously titled Beautiful Artemis Thor Neptune Odin Delusional Sapphic Inspirational Hypnosis Painting — tipped to fetch £2.2 million — failed to find any takers at an auction last week in New York, the artist conceded that it was “overpriced. It was bought from me less than a year ago at half the price.”
He went on to say that artists want people to hang on to their works, not “sell them that day”.
This seems just a little disingenuous from the man who pushed so hard for new legislation allowing artists to gain a “royalty” from the resale of their works. Still, Hirst got his big break during the downturn of the early Nineties. If anyone can suspend a bull market in formaldehyde and flog it for a fortune, it's him.
Oy vey, this boy's a putz!
Apparently the Christmas panto is already going great guns this year, with families who once splashed out on going abroad buying cheaper tickets to Neverland instead. Still, some of the theatrical delights on offer are pretty strange. I ran into Aaron Barschak the other day, the self-styled “comedy terrorist” who invaded Prince William's 21st birthday party in an Osama bin Laden get-up. Barschak, dressed in his habitual Hassid-meets-hippy style, was in ebullient form: “I think I've done it this time,” he crowed. “My family thought I couldn't bring the Jewish people into any further dispute, but I'm playing the part of Fagin in a production of Oliver!”
Reader views (2)
where is David Lammy
- Edward. K Rapley, loughton, 18/11/2008 21:04
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Youv'e had FOUR?
What do you think you are doing?
- Muriel Sebag-Montefiore, Palm Beach, Florida, United States of America, 18/11/2008 20:14
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