February 12, 2009

Horse 958 - Giant Horse



This from the BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/kent/7880889.stm


A giant white horse has been chosen as a new £2m art commission for south east England dubbed "Angel of the South". The design, by former Turner Prize winner Mark Wallinger, was selected from a three-strong shortlist as part of the Ebbsfleet Landmark Project.
His design for the public art commission will see a horse standing on all four hooves at 33 times life-size. Once built, it will dominate the north Kent landscape, standing as high as Nelson's Column at about 164ft (50m).

I find this story quite worrying and it's not just because £2 million is going to be spent on something this frivolous but of the terrible horror that is about to be unleashed on an unsuspecting British public; and that is the brute force of Greeks.

Greeks, you ask? If history has taught us anything, it's that if you see a giant horse outside, then it's probably not a good idea to bring it in, especially if your name happens to be Troy. Of course the Trojan Horse wasn't actually a Trojan Horse, it was in fact Greek. Though I suppose that it was intended as a gift, so at that point title would have passed, so on second thought in the end it actually was a Trojan Horse albeit one full of Greeks.

That is of course if the thing existed in the first place. The so called Trojan Horse could have very easily been a covered battering ram, much the same way as a clothes horse isn't really a horse as such. The story itself was recorded by the poet Virgil in his Aeneid, in which the character Laocoön says: Equo ne credite, Teucri. Quidquid id est, timeo Danaos et dona ferentes. Which when translated means: Do not trust the horse, Trojans! Whatever it is, I fear the Greeks, even bringing gifts. This is the origin of the modern adage Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.

Virgil was of course one of Rome's greatest poets and wrote in Latin. This makes sense condsering that we can almost certainly rule out the Greeks suggesting bewaring of themselves, if one can use such a participle, bewaring.

Although having made that point, it's still a good idea to beware of wasting £2 millon of public money on such a stupid project, thought it's probably a tad more sensible than the skyscraper made of popsicle sticks, or the fifty-foot magnifying glass or the escalator to nowhere.

Just where do you get a nine foot sugar lump for the horsie from?

No comments: