Beauty is…

Have you ever looked at any form of transportation and wondered at the lines and curves and how decisions were made in their construction?  I have.  But I can tell you that I’m not always a fan of them.  Not everything that is created is beautiful to everyone.

Now we’ve looked at horses and one thing I didn’t dwell on in regards to them is the time when horses were used to pull carriages and ploughs and wagons - in fact (other than your feet) in Europe, you used to need a horse. You had the big Clydesdale horses right down to the small Shetland ponies.  Horses were quick to train and could get you to where you wanted to go.

And then things began to change as people used their imagination and began to discover ways to build better transportation that became more and more comfortable until we had the Ford cars…..and then on and on….and we have multiple cars from multiple factories.  Some of these cars are real beauties.  People often buy their cars for different reasons.  For my family the very first consideration is the fitting in of one or preferably two electric wheelchairs because of our disabilities.

When her majesty the Queen was carried from Balmoral into England for the funeral service, the car that was used had a fantastic beauty.  I watched it on the television for hours as it made the journey to be buried beside her husband.  I could see the beauty of the vehicle used even from above looking down on it.

And then I consider the  style and beauty of the carriage used for the Duke of Wellington during Queen Victoria’s reign.  It was a stunning piece of work laid out in gold and truly spectacular.  I haven’t seen it in person but it was on a programme on the tv and I looked at the reproduction (which this was) in absolute awe.

Of course, for Kevin and I we have to have beauty matched with practicality. You can get a beautiful stick - either the beauty comes in the lines of the stick and the curves of the handle or the stick itself is decorated.  But then when you go to crutches, walkers and wheelchairs, there aren’t very many differences.  They are built primarily for functional use and nothing else is really considered.

Some aeroplanes are really beautiful and others (to me) look so fragile I am wary of trusting them to get me from one place to another - but they do!  So beauty is not always the main consideration, but if people take pride in their work they can make it beautiful.