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EARLIER this year, the New York Times published a front-page story with
the headline: ‘A Widely Used Treated Plywood Is Found to Decay in a Few
Years’. Had I spotted this at the time, I would have been enticed to read
more: after all, who wants to replace a leaking roof or repair a rotting
door? In any case I find decay, any decay, intrinsically fascinating – but
then I’m a technologist.

Richard Brooks, who writes the ‘Pendennis’ column in The Observer, and
who must surely be an arts man, didn’t find the piece fascinating at all.
Indeed, he picked up on it in his column a few weeks later and suggested
that it rivalled in tedium the famous (he called it the infamous) headline
in The Times: ‘Small Earthquake in Chile: Not Many Dead’. In short, Brooks
was suggesting that the New York Times headline was one of the most boring
in the history of newspapers. He even called for the resignation of the
editor.

Before challenging Brooks on his attitude to decay, I must ask a question:
What do journalists consider an interesting headline? As far as the tabloids
are concerned, it is quite straightforward: the ideal piece contains references
to money, sex, the church, violence and royalty, not necessarily altogether
or in that order.

As for the heavies, readers are supposed to be most affected by news
items dealing with politics or, the ultimate introspection, things to do
with the Media itself. ‘Thatcher clashes with Kinnock’ is meant to quicken
the pulse, as is Peregrine Worsthorne’s opinion on the appropriateness of
Andrew Neil’s girl friend. In the main though, politics is all: science
and technology come very low in the scheme of things.

Personally, I find many of the political items predictable and tedious,
but can I justify my claim that decaying plywood is more exciting? First,
some background information: wood is a natural, polymeric, cellular-fibre
composite requiring less energy in its production than any other material
used in construction. It is also the most environmentally friendly product;
if the trees are specially grown they can even ameliorate the greenhouse
effect.

But it’s the decay, the rotting, which is really interesting, especially
its scientific, philosophical and religious connotations. Of course, given
a suitable environment or pretreatment, wood doesn’t have to rot – wooden
artefacts remain in excellent condition after several millennia in Egyptian
tombs, and oak beams in Elizabethan houses have survived centuries of exposure
to the wet British climate. Where rotting has occurred, it is usually as
a result of mistakes having been made – a failure to protect against the
rapacity of wood-destroying fungi, dry and wet rot. No one can claim that
the durability of construction materials is unimportant. Many of the building
‘disasters’ of the 1950s and 60s, so fiercely castigated by Prince Charles,
have been a result of the rotting and corrosion and discolouring and spalling
of the materials, rather than being due to mistakes in design by the hapless
architects.

Shouldn’t we be more philosophical about decay? After all it is happening
to us all, all the time. Rich man, poor man, beggar man, newspaper columnist
– all must one day die. According to Flaubert: ‘As soon as we are born,
bits start to fall off.’ With his dying words the Buddha warned us: ‘All
compound things are subject to decay.’ And 500 years later, in the Sermon
on the Mount, Christ managed to compress biological depredation, chemical
attack and human intervention into a single line when He told his flock
not to store up treasures on Earth, ‘where moth and rust doth corrupt, and
where thieves break through and steal’.

It’s all the fault of entropy, another word for despair according to
W. H. Auden. On the other hand, if things didn’t rot, and there were no
other manifestations of the second law of thermodynamics, yesterday would
be like today, and today would be as tomorrow. The arrow of time might even
be reversed, and think how confusing that would be. It is because things
rot and entropy increases that we know that the Universe must have an end,
and that it cannot have existed for ever; that is, the Universe has both
a beginning and an end. If it has a beginning, does this mean it had a creator?
I really don’t know, but it’s a question worth asking. One is reminded of
the words of the well-known hymn: ‘Change and decay in all around I see,
O Thou who changest not, abide with me.’ If you still think decay is boring,
then I am truly sorry.

As I write, I have just come across a headline in The Guardian: ‘Thatcher
will be ditched, says Kinnock.’ Should this come about, apparently, she
might be replaced by Sir Geoffrey Howe. Imagine how exciting that would
be.

Jack Harris is a metallurgist in the West Country.