North & South: A call to romance

The following is the ending of the BBC Bafta award winning drama North & South, based on the novel by Elizabeth Gaskell. It’s a “spoiler” in that it shows you how the story ends. It’s an “improver” in that it will remind you of a time when women were ladies and men were gentlemen, and this touching, understated, and well acted scene would surely melt the heart of even the most hardened and misguided feminist or the most loutish yob. The music, by Martin Phipps, is also beautiful and adds much to the atmosphere, so I have embedded it at high quality…

Very often on this site I have written of the need for people to re-examine their values. It’s sad to see city women reject decent men in favour of idiots during their twenties and then wonder why they are “on the shelf” in their thirties. They should instead, of course, reject the corrupted values of junk magazines and programmes such as Sex and the City (and most other programmes on the TV for that matter), which do not have their happiness, rather only their own profits, at heart.

Many men are little better: I see the most disgraceful brash, vulgar behaviour on some occasions when I go out (the only only trouble is, of course, these same men are often the ones chosen by the women while decent men are sidelined). One can hardly stand at a bar for 10 seconds these days, for example, before a mouthful of offensive language is unloaded nearby without the slightest care. And if you were to complain to staff, who do you think would be the one asked to leave? Objection to public profanity in this decadent society would merely be considered quaint. So now I avoid pubs at weekends. Men need to grow up and understand that real fulfillment cannot be found from drunkeness, idle sex and abandon, but only from an acceptance of responsibility and a justified sense of integrity.

There needs to be a widespread return to sensitivity and dignity in city society, because it seems to fast be evaporating before our eyes, with people only ever behaving properly because they feel they “have to”, or “might get caught” – and this elimination is being celebrated. It looks a little like the fall of the Roman Empire. People need to understand that genuine consideration for others, not the pursuit of wealth, is the source of happiness. This needs to happen generally and needs to filter into personal relationships too. There needs to be a return to romance – which is an explicit demonstration of sensitivity. Like Tina Turner said:

“There’s not enough romance in this world. Too many people thinking only of themselves. You’ve got to give love for its return.”

I, however, will not be available. I’m taken – by the kind of lady I thought had been conditioned out of society all together, the kind I have wanted to find all my life. With her grace and integrity she is an antidote to the vulgarity of the society I see around me here in inner city London, and is the kind all men would desire to have and all women would aspire to be, if they only knew what was good for them. I feel rather as if I’m flying away in a helicopter from a war zone, as in the film Platoon – I feel concerned for what is left behind, but very happy to be out.