Life is imperfect and its rounded edges and knocks from experience have an appeal
We are often exhorted to define our terms and there is merit in that. Ian Richards and Charles Ogden were not indulging in some donnish jeu d'esprit when they wrote their book The Meaning of Meaning, published in 1923 and never out of print since. But at the same time, there are arguments for imprecision and deliberate vagueness too, and perhaps in the end they are more convincing. Life is imperfect and its rounded edges and knocks from experience have an appeal, a humanity lacking in the absolutely upright and austere. There are virtues in the word "maybe". Instead of a sharp No, "later" is kinder to an impatient child. Haziness also reigns over that other kind and gentle world, the English landscape: mist veiling the fells or dusk gathering around lamps in a dusty street. In this strange late April of warm summer weather and few showers, dusty haze has become the predominant feature of the English landscape, city skylines imprecise and rural scenes as soft as Housman's blue remembered hills. There's often merit in a lack of clarity, not least in politics where the demand for absolute answers in no way reflects the reality of life, where equivocation and uncertainty are usually much closer to the truth. Our greatest artists reflect this in paintings such as Turner's composition of 1844, Rain, Steam and Speed. Royal Academicians complained that the master had lost all form in a haze of light. But it is his images which last and inspire new generations. Not theirs.