Heart Beat Maurice NeliganThings seem to be settling down now to what passes as normal in this society. It is just as well. The excitement was killing us.
I have no intention of becoming a diet bore, although with due modesty I note that I am 14lbs lighter than when this purgatorial exercise commenced almost three weeks ago. I am now in possession of countless diet regimes and broadsheets sent to me by kind folk.
These range from the eminently sensible "eat less" variety to the more draconian "swallow a tapeworm" extreme. While I thank everybody who sent me such, I profoundly regret that we are no longer allowed to light bonfires.
Before I trace the progression from the diet sheet to the bonfire, I must confess a certain mystification. What exactly is a "serving"? Is it a teaspoon or is it a ladle?
It strikes me that there is an opportunity for dietary backsliding in such imprecision.
It was the bonfire or rather the lack of same that exercised my mind over the past few days. Bonfires were for me an essential part of autumn. This was not only for their obviously utilitarian purposes, but they also seemed to have magical connotations around Halloween. No respectable witch or coven would be without one.
The bonfire, with its musty autumn odour of damp, dead leaves, was part of our lives. But now, for some obscure reason, it has become a thing of the past. It has gone the way of that other autumnal institution, the firework, with even less justification I might add.
I suppose that once more we are being saved from ourselves by some benign institution like the Health and Safety Authority. They know best. Personally I would rather take my chances.
Somebody told me that the ban had something to do with the release of dioxins from such fires. Why this should bother anybody leaves me at a loss. Certainly there do not appear to be any major medical problems associated with these substances, other than in very high doses.
The industrial accident at Seveso in Italy in the 1970s led to little mortality or ongoing morbidity. Postulated links between dioxins and cancer are either non-existent or tenuous in the extreme. If you put four coats of dioxins on our old acquaintance the laboratory rat, something nasty might happen. This is therefore extrapolated to the human condition with little justification.
Maybe this ban has nothing at all to do with dioxins. Could my little bonfire be warming the globe? I don't believe that either, and while I am aware that global warming appears to be happening, I doubt that the fires of farmers, gardeners and indeed witches have very much to do with it.
For generations such people have lit such fires without keeling over or poisoning the neighbours.
Generations of Orangemen have lit their beacons of toleration and mutual respect on Eleventh Night. Generations of their Green counterparts have merrily torched cars and buses to show that they equally esteem their neighbours' culture. Are such simple pleasures to be cast away at the behest of faceless ones with their learned exposition of pseudo-science?
The medieval physician Paracelsus drew our attention to the fact that many poisons also have therapeutic value. To put it plainly, poison is dose-related.
We choose to believe that dioxins, like environmental tobacco smoke, are bad for us, although the minuscule doses involved make this hypothesis highly improbable.
Most folk accept the word of "experts" and dare I say they are influenced by the odd media scare foretelling doom in some shape or other.
In this regard, a gentleman called Roger Bate once illustrated this point when he posed a certain question to a random group of people. Bate told them that the chemical industry routinely used a chemical "dihydrogen monoxide" in its processes. He then gave a list of adverse effects of the substance, noting its association with acid rain and erosion, that it was found in most tumours and that accidental inhalation could even be fatal.
He then asked if the interviewees felt that the substance should be banned by the EU. Some 5 per cent said no, while 19 per cent had no opinion and 76 per cent felt it should be so banned. I always knew that water was bad for you, and am relieved to be included in such a thinking majority.
It seems "always best on these occasions to do what the mob do".
"But suppose there are two mobs," suggested Mr Snodgrass. "Shout with the largest," replied Mr Pickwick (Dickens).
The problem with this is that the mob seldom gets to make the decisions and frequently does not even understand what is being fed to them from above.
The most tenuous evidence is presented as incontrovertible fact and failure to concur, let alone to question the current proposition, is akin to heresy.
We all know what happened heretics. But now there's another problem: if we can't burn them anymore, how can we dispose of them in an eco-friendly way?
I suppose I'll just have to do without the autumn bonfire and the smell of burning eucalyptus. The reds and golds of fallen leaves now choke the gutters of our unswept streets, contributing to our picturesque mini-floods every time it rains. This apparently is progress.
Autumn seemed better in the past, with its bonfires, ghosts and witches and when children could dress up for Halloween and go out unaccompanied. When fireworks were something special and when we were a gentler society.
Maurice Neligan is a cardiac surgeon.