Yoko's peace

So Yoko Ono [with son Sean] came to Niceland the other weekend bearing Tidings of Great Joy – she has decided to bestow upon the City of Reykjavík a ‘peace column’ made of glass, inscribed with a line of text from ‘Imagine’ and another line of text from Yoko herself, which will contain peace wishes from people around the world. It will be made of glass and illuminated from within.

Yoko is doing this because she feels there is a ‘special energy’ in Reykjavík and loves it here. The cynics say it’s because Reykjavík is the only city in the world that would agree to something like this without even having seen the ‘work of art’ that old Yoko is proposing.

A press conference was announced, at which Yoko would reveal where she had decided to erect her peace column. It was all very hush-hush – the only clue that it would ‘rise high in the cityscape’. EPI and I had our money on Öskjuhlíð near The Pearl [that’s where all the tourists go to get the panoramic view], with the hill on which Hallgrímskirkja stands coming in at a close second. Imagine our surprise, then, when Yoko announced that her illuminated column would be on Viðey – Viðey – an island off the coast of Reykjavík that has one pretty church and one restaurant and one ruin of a house, and not much else. You can explore it in, say, 40 minutes, plus it’s just a tad out of the way. You have to go there by boat [obviously] and I’m pretty sure there are only boat rides out there in the summer, at least for the public.

Anyway, call me a sceptic if you will if you shall if you must, but I tend to side with the cynics, who get extremely sarcastic about Yoko’s ‘professional widow’ role and her ‘peace industry’ activities. And I had to laugh at the musings of the Blaðið columnist who could not understand how the column was going to ‘cast the message of peace around the world’ from Viðey island – from her perspective it would, at best, cast its message upon the people of Skúlagata*. Besides, for all anybody knew it might just turn out to be horrifically ugly, in which case it might be better to put it up in the highlands, in the company of all those aluminium smelters** that have pretty much ruined the beauty of the landscape anyway.

ENOUGH! HOW ABOUT SOME WEATHER?
It’s gorgeous right now, calm and reasonably mild [4°C] and the sun is struggling to appear from behind the clouds, where it has more or less remained for the last two days. Spring is definitely around the corner, with the extended daylight to prove it. Sunrise was at… oh wouldn’t you know, it’s been so long that I can’t find my calendar. But daybreak is before 8am and right now, at 18.39, it is still bright as day.

*A residential street in Reykjavík, facing the sea.
** The government keeps threatening to build more and more smelters – it’s an absolute catastrophe in every single way IMHO and they would be much better off supporting other industry like software etc. than putting up stinky smelters all parts of the country and ruining our beautiful nature – it hardly bears thinking about!