Nolite super foenum ambulare, read the sign.
It caused me to do a double-take, more than thirty years’ ago, at a certain Cambridge college.
My rudimentary Latin, with the added situational context of the sign itself, helped me to deduce its intent. Judging by the pristine state of the lawn, I was not the only person to be able to do so.
I have no idea whether that sign still exists, and perhaps it was a product not only of its time, but – more significantly – of its unique cultural context.
I was reminded of the sign when I drove the new Land Rover Defender today.
To call it ‘new’ is quite likely the understatement of the decade. For male Singaporeans of a certain vintage, the Land Rover Defender connotes mud, mosquitoes, blood, sweat, and tears, and more mosquitoes. But it was also the Defender which I loved and respected for its absolute authority over terrain, for which you learned to trust it to get you back to camp and back to the security of overcooked mess hall food.
When a Defender came rolling over the horizon, you knew you would be able to hit the showers soon.
I fell so hard for the Defender that I told my Commanding Officer I wanted to become an Army Driver. Alas, that was not to be, because the powers that be deemed me over-qualified (whatever that meant).
It was therefore with great excitement and anticipation that I took the wheel of the new Defender today. I had, after all, been waiting thirty-five years for the opportunity.
Like the sign on that Cambridge lawn, the new Defender is a product of the present time and culture. New Defender has to trace the narratives from its storied past of deserts, rainforests and montane tundra, to the post-modern world of a COVID-19 future.
Are there still rivers to ford and horizons to chart? Maybe now, more so than ever. And if any vehicle be up to the challenge, surely Defender – trusted by so many generations of geographers, explorers, soldiers, doctors, and nurses – can?
Nolite super foenum ambulare.
If you think about it, there’s something a bit off with the idiomatic expression. A quick google suggests the alternative Nolite in herbam ambulare.
The differences are just enough to precipitate a degree of dissonance.
As Defender and I were tootling along, I could not help but find the whole experience a little anti-climactic. It was a cocoon of auditory isolation, with visual cues of exposed Allen screws combining (or were they clashing?) with the tactile luxury of suede (or possibly alcantara). The large ‘DEFENDER’ in bold letters on the front passenger’s fascia is very much needed, lest one get distracted by Knightsbridge on the way to Kilimanjaro.
Yes, new Defender can press on with alacrity when one pivots one’s right foot.
But you don’t really want to know that, do you?
Suffice instead the knowledge that come what may – with the possible exception of an Extinction Level Event – Defender will see you home to the security of a warm bed and shower.
Just like it did thirty-five years’ ago.
Nolite super foenum ambulare?
Why walk when one can waft?
