Color me superficial, but with no dearth of evil under the sun, reading this upset me more than anything in months:
Vandals wrecked Europe’s most valuable collection of 60 Jaguar cars by crashing them in a game of dodgems. The cars, including some models dating back to the 1930s, were said to be worth more than £1million.
I don’t consider myself an aesthete, will only visit a museum if lured into one by a suffiently attractive member of the opposite sex and am deeply suspicious of anyone who sits deep in seeming reflection before a painting for more than five minutes, but this subhuman lack of respect for beauty infuriates me. I think I can find more sympathy for the hit man, whose motives I can at least understand, than for these uncivilized cretins.
I sold my Jaguar years ago, and while I don’t regret it the way I regret selling my MGB, I still retain great fondness for the family car. (The cruelest telephone call I have ever received was from Little Miss Dartmouth, who gently broke the news of a certain automotive merger some years ago to me by singing, sans introduction, “have you driven a Ford… lately?”)
If the British authorities ever catch these unspeakable vandals, I hope they’ll consider turning them over to my uncles for punishment. They are mechanically-skilled and automotively-minded engineers who literally fly the Jaguar flag for what they consider to be the most significant 24 hours of the year. I think they could be trusted to wreak proper justice on the barbarians.