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Radical Middle | 221<br />
led to a cornucopia of ludicrously lucrative speeches on the<br />
conference circuit. (Shameful secret of our time – much more<br />
money in saying the same practised thing over and over than in<br />
reaching for new things.) More usefully to the world, I also had<br />
a fine time as a corporate crap-detector – going into companies,<br />
talking to everyone who would talk to me, and composing a<br />
picture of where the human dynamics go wrong and why. as I<br />
write this afterword in february 2010 I look across my beautiful<br />
upstairs deck to the trees of three suburbs and draw my breath,<br />
again, at my privilege. My trees are a beauty the like of which is<br />
seldom seen. What I have is not a bird’s-eye view but a treetop<br />
view. right in front of me is a gentle decline rising to an eyelevel<br />
horizon two miles or three kilometres away, and it’s all<br />
tree. There’s nothing but tree, no wall, no roof, no pole, no<br />
cable, only 10,000 trees, in more shades of green than a colourchart<br />
can dream of. Within them, yes, are hundreds of houses<br />
and traffic lights and roads and hoardings, but I can’t see those.<br />
I see trees, trees and trees. and birds, thousands of birds.<br />
Outside rest my two cars, one exotic and one spacious, never<br />
mind that both ought to have gone for spares years ago. The<br />
pool water dances to its cleaner’s beat and the fridge is full.<br />
Much of mankind would kill for this. can I complain?<br />
Yes, I can. Watch me. We’re coming back to it.<br />
But first let me catch up on other things, like Tony.<br />
We’ve both written jokily about the rows we’ve had, but<br />
you have to know that some of these rows were no joke. Twice<br />
– I think in ’05 and ’06 – Tony produced books of mine that<br />
between us, 15,000 kms apart, we delivered unto life with big<br />
bad birthmarks, and he blamed me and I blamed him (and lo!,<br />
we were both half right) and you don’t want to know the aggro<br />
that followed.<br />
Moreover, as you’ve seen, Tony abhors my entire thesis about<br />
taking democracy the next notch up: – “pie-in-the-sky middleclass<br />
anarchy that doesn’t take any account of human nature”.<br />
Generally when people give me that kind of uphill I quietly<br />
write them off in my mind as the modern heirs of the British
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