Stilts (September)

Leonard Woolf’s entry for 30 September in his ‘A Calendar of Consolation’ (Hogarth Press, 1967) quotes Montaigne. “It is no good getting oneself up upon stilts, for even on them we still have to walk on our legs, and though we sit on the highest throne in the world, we are still sitting on our own bottom.” Succinct and circumspect, his words cannot be improved on. Thrones, we know about them, surrounding their occupants with power to elevate or destroy, themselves and others. And stilts that, like cars and planes, give the impression of progress and no inbuilt design faults.