The treatment handed out to inanimate objects over the centuries has been appalling. Humanity has consistently taken up objects, used them, changed them, broken them up, created new ones, and discarded them without so much as holiday pay. And it is something we are all guilty of. For who among us does not possess at least a few objects? And in fact they are our very slaves. We did not consider their rights as autonomous individuals when we rudely possessed them.

	^ Click on cover to browse the book	A West Cornwall Short Ben Aldous [extract] Cornwall is a place of great religious intensity, veiled by the touristy tat of garish July afternoons and milk quotas. When the superficial is swept away one is faced with a passionately spiritual people for whom the extreme soon becomes the mundane. The peculiar surrounds of Mulfra Quoit with its ancient stone bastions, the histories of post-reformation uprising, the Wesleyian revival amongst the po-faced miners and the various offshoots in the following years — Cornwall 's extremities harbour the weird, far from the prying eyes of the great capital. Hence the strange and unregulated worship patterns of Tredinnick's Elim Pentecostal Shed. ‘Shed' is appropriate since it was a small wooden structure built during the late 1950s by five spastic Scouts, a retired coast guard called Bernard and Jane Petherton, a school cook. The Shed could comfortably seat eleven people and uncomfortably twenty-seven (successful only once when some members from the Zennor sect joined on a Sunday) and was run by an enthusiastic Malawian called Dr Aboujha. The Shed had its own idiosyncrasies. Built by untrained and largely uncoordinated Scouts, the Shed leaked heavily in winter and had twice been close to absolute collapse but for a local handy man. Dr Abouhja, unknown to his congregation, was a former Baptist minister who had fallen on hard times. The hard times were entirely of his own making for he had embezzled nearly £20,000 from the Malawian Baptist Association and to avoid arrest made his way to Britain and then onto Cornwall where he felt sure he could avoid detection from any authorities. Whilst staying in Penzance he came across a small advertisement, announcing the need of a new minister at the Shed, so he applied for the position. His application process was fairly straightforward: he would preach one of his old sermons and see what happened. It was a dark, dank night with only six members of the congregation huddled near a mobile gas fire. Grandpa Koo (known to all outside the family as Percy) was there and, although at first he was sceptical about ‘blackies', he was enraptured by the fiery preaching, emotional outbursts and talk of the devil lurking in every corner. And so Dr Abouhja was invited to become the new minister with a tiny stipend. He made it clear from the start he would not take on any pastoral duties. He would never be available to meet his flock in any circumstances and would never be available to clarify anything he said from the pulpit, but he would preach every Sunday at 6 p.m. sharp for forty-five minutes. And he did. * * * The walk from Madron to Tredinnick was some four miles and on a winter night it was quite unpleasant. Grandpa Koo would meet Roscoe at the end of the path to Trythall Farm and together they would stomp through the grassy fields. The shadows would leap up in frightening configurations as the trees swayed unpredictably. Most often there would be little said between them, but on occasion Roscoe would ask about the sermon they had heard the week before. ‘Why is Jews not allowed to drink pork Grandpa?' ‘It's not drinking pork that's wrong, you can drink it if you can get it all liquidy. Dr Abouhja told us that you mustn't try to eat storks, herons, bats, seagulls or little owls because they was on Satan's side as secret agents during the war of the Apocalypse. It says so in Leviticus somewhere.' But Grandpa Koo had no idea where. Grandpa Koo did not read, nor did any member of the Shed, although Mrs Courtney's daughter was a teacher in Redruth. Hence the little congregation was subject to Dr Abouhja's exegetical whims. He spent no time at all preparing his sermons and would turn up and preach from obscure verses buried deep in the Pentateuch or half snatches from the Minor Prophets. Each week he became progressively less biblical and more imaginative. And his list of forbidden foodstuffs became increasingly bizarre as he himself began to lose a grip on reality. Some weeks were literally a reading of the week's forbidden. Jugged hare, Tesco Irish stew, shredded wheat, gold blend, sturgeon, weevil, marzipan, cider, white spirit, caperberries and falafel. His readings could be intertwined with eulogies on homosexuals, Malawian witches and the dangers of glue sniffing in the Penzance bus shelter. As he became stranger he became more fascinating to listen to and Roscoe was hooked. Read another extract Contents listing From Total Cardboard 8 £5.00 144pp, 24 x 17 cm ISBN: 0 9757380 1 1 (Can I pay by cheque?) (Where can I see it in shops?)
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In our enlightened times we no longer feel constrained to discriminate against each other. We have also extended this courtesy to animals, to a degree. Even plants have their needs tended. For we accept that all living things have their value (in public anyway). We even show concern about our environment, and only dump toxic waste when no one is looking. As a consequence of our concern, it has come to be noticed that inanimate objects are often neglected. For they do not come under any blanket concern for the environment. We are talking individual rights for individual objects here. Indeed, individual objects receive more than their fair share of discrimination. And just because they are not alive, it does not mean they should not have the same rights as the rest of us. For how can objects speak out for themselves if they are inanimate? They are not merely being shy either. They require some rights enshrined in law, even if they are too embarrassed to come forward. The treatment handed out to inanimate objects over the centuries has been appalling. Humanity has consistently taken up objects, used them, changed them, broken them up, created new ones, and discarded them without so much as holiday pay. And it is something we are all guilty of. For who among us does not possess at least a few objects. And in fact they are our very slaves. We did not consider their rights as autonomous individuals when we rudely possessed them. And we claim to own them. Even if that were true, and there is some argument to show, no matter how much you pay for an object, if you do not respect it as an individual, then you have no right to dictate the course of its existence, objects did not ask to be manipulated by us. In fact we have never asked whether they like being asked. And even if they cannot answer, or communicate in any way, this does not assume they have no rights. By any democratic standard, mistreatment of an object represents a fundamental denial of an object's right to exist as an object, for and by itself, for its own purposes. And if the object just sits there doing nothing, then that may be considered an expression of its own autonomous existence, and that should not be tampered with. The fact that objects will never complain of injustice means we must protect them all the more, as we would always protect the vulnerable in any society. And perhaps there are more reasons now to treat objects with respect. For, in our modern era, objects outnumber us a thousandfold. If they were ever to become critically aware, and to organise themselves along political lines, then we may have some problems. Objects might go on strike, they might decide on sanctions, or even declare war. It would be a conflict we could not win. There have already been several instances of objects hurting humans without provocation. How these instances would increase if objects became resentful at their situation. For these instances are increasing already, if slowly. We should not have to live in potential fear of objects. We should begin educating them now. So they can take their place on the world stage as equal players rather than props. We should find out what the hopes and aspirations of objects are. Once we work up an appreciation of them, then maybe we can have a dialogue with them. Then we can have partnerships with objects, establish their rights as equal entities, rather than merely possessing them.