Opinionaters They have prickly peculiar-shaped ears a mere switch of accent can immediately stop working. Their eyes, when expedient, see similarities between chalk and cheese. At the back of their minds lurks a menagerie of facts trained to attack at a sniff of disagreement. Repetition no object, they could go on for years, even centuries, and never ever get bored. This one seethes from a favourite armchair; that one acts the peripatetic pursuing you down corridors then out the door, trampling the quiet of morning, dividing even the flowers into wrong and right. They know more about foreign countries than the inhabitants do themselves, things about you which you’d hardly have dreamed. Useless to object this mightn’t be the case. Here categories come armoured. Logic’s a hitman hired to lead you down some alley and then bring out a sawn-off statistic against which amity forms no defence. No experience is so complex it can’t be simplified beyond recognition, rendered dire and tidy in its own despite, a doubt-proof fit. Like pebbles their certainties are polished to a resounding deafness; in unsaid reply you note how one silent breath is more wondrous than a thousand speeches... Martin Bennett | Mudlark No. 12 Contents | Summer Exhibition