Wonder what it’s like to be invisible

IN the embarrassing ‘heir and spare’ mudsling, the Windsors, whose aim is survival, have become invisible.

This is clever because hereditary power and dodgy democracy depends to some extent on fudge, smoke and mirrors.

I’ve often wondered what it would be like to be invisible. It makes more intriguing situations such as waiting to be seen in the doctor’s surgery or failing to appear in court.

It would above all reveal the answer to the question on everyone’s mind (surely): is our behaviour and that of family and friends, local and national politicians etc, the result of our values or what we can get away with without being seen or found out?

Tolkien fans will know of the magic ring which Gollum lost and Bilbo Baggins found under the Misty Mountains and which afforded him invisibility when he slipped it on his finger.

Saving Bilbo from harm initially, the ring soon became a symbol of the capacity for evil as it was in the early story from Plato of the ring of Gyges.

The ancient Greek philosopher told the story of a shepherd who stole a golden ring which had the power of invisibility and enabled him to seduce the queen and murder the king of Lydia.

So, if we were invisible would we be pernicious predators or benign philanthropists?

Apparently, scientists have not ruled out the possibility of invisibility although they doubt whether an invisible person would ever make an appearance in the lab, unlike the invisible man in H.G. Wells’s novel, which I was forced to read in school.

However, having chosen to study Greek and not physics I could never see through the principles of transformation optics and indices of pigment and refraction and so, as with the invisible pencil, I could never see the point.

Yet I could see the thinking behind what Wells called the magnificent vision of invisibility with its mystery, power and freedom. It carries with it the propensity for selfish mischief and the temptation to act with impunity.

Only close scrutiny and proper accountability will put a stop to any public and royal invisibility.