The Fellow

He would have preferred the Cotswolds or Yorkshire. Seaside resorts in the north-west feel tired, neglected and abandoned in the late autumn. Had the streets been thronged with conference delegates and hangers on still it would not disguise the fact that they were not designed to be seen in this light. People were huddled in cafés or seminars updating their blogs, drafting speeches or scribbling Christmas lists as speaker after speaker paraded their hobby horse.

This was the tenth year that the Institute and the Society had held a joint conference. He knew it would be a generation before merger of these professional bodies became even a pipe dream, so deeply engrained were the differences between them. Though both had received royal patronage, they were constantly creating heights from which to look down on each other.

He had arranged a private meeting with a practitioner whose growing reputation intrigued him. The young man’s work had been causing a stir in the provinces. Too left of centre and uncouth to be on the conference platform, he was nevertheless in town speaking at some fringe meetings. The fellow pulled up his collar against the wind which funnelled through the narrow side street just off the front as he checked the numbers off looking for the guest house in which they were to meet.

He found the young man in the dining room reading.

They rehearsed the usual pleasantries. Then the fellow started to probe.

“Everyone can see that your work is” – he hesitated to say ‘special’ “ ... different ... but we are puzzled by your approach. Where do your ideas come from? Which school do you follow?”

“You are a fellow of the Institute? You are asking me to analyse what I do? You can look under the bonnet, I’m not hiding anything.”

“Well, people have expressed opinions. I’d like to try and see things from your point of view.”

The young man smiled quizzically. “People? You people create beautiful facades, ornamentation, embellishments. Your work is distinguished by its appearance but you neglect function and purpose. You treat symptoms without affecting a cure – you generate symptoms without recreating the condition. You use a cosmetic surgeon to disguise a disfiguring tumour. Your focus is on effect and not cause. You manufacture an engine to an obsolete design and specification; and then you dress it in contemporary body work made of state of the art materials.“

The fellow felt a little breathless.

“You lionise the founders, the heroes of our profession but you forget that they were ostracised by their peers because they didn’t comply with the norms and standards of their time. You’re like a power station that consumes more power than it produces. You always start with the tools and techniques you have already. You regurgitate instead of being radical, you institutionalise instead of being innovative.
I am only practising what they taught and what each generation habitually overlooks. It’s nothing new.”

A gust of wind and spray hit him in the face as he left the guest house and turned towards the sea front. He felt re-inflated. He looked at the shabby pastel painted rendering on the buildings opposite and thought of the damage the rain and sea spray must be doing as it seeped into the cracks.