Taking a lead from Norman Mailer, you don’t, Dear Reader, have to read the whole of this post. If you’re bored by hard politics, skip to the indented paragraphs and a brief discussion of Thatcher’s personality; if you don’t think that you have time to read the whole post, please read the last four paragraphs.

Thatcher’s policies divide quite neatly into two groups: that which was malicious and that which was necessary. The first is self-explanatory. Within the second camp, are policies most of which were in some way historically inevitable but for which her government found a way to accomplish them either poorly or maliciously.

Poll tax was a policy which colourfully represented her government’s malice. Poll tax was charged per individual (or ‘poll’) meaning that a family of four would pay tax for every family member, with only a single adjustment for income. The previous system of ‘rates’ taxed a household according to the size of their property. One could fill a daily newspaper with decent arguments on tax, though I move that a solid governing principle is: tax should be levied according to the ability of a person to pay; poll tax made it so that those who were struggling had to pay proportionally more than those who were comfortable. Thatcher claimed to represent the free-market, which is laudable, though this was economic cruelty, not freedom.

Another expression of this cruelty was what is known as Section 28, a part of local council reform which prohibited the promotion of same-sex relationships and the idea that they were a family relationship. I’m sure that some are tempted to say that this rule is harmful only by a peculiarity of its enactment; conversely, it is an affront to personal and vocal freedom in itself. Same sex relationships and family relationships of a homosexual nature do not harm anyone, they are a lively component of a nation of liberty and, as such, there should be no prohibition against promoting them. Historically, this rule meant that support groups which had been helping young people to understand their sexuality stopped or reduced their activities so as to avoid breaking the rule – as a result, a generation of young people who experienced non-heterosexual feelings were subjected to the wisdom and equity of the playground and their teachers. Recall that it was only in 1967 and under one of my favourite Prime Ministers, Harold Wilson, that homosexuality was made legal.

Nevertheless, some Thatcher policies were inevitable, some of which were actually prudent. Section 28 was a policy of malice, while many of her free market policies were derived originally from ideas of individuality and freedom. The universe, I suppose, wouldn’t tolerate a situation in which the Thatcher government enacted good policies – rather, anything sensible had to be done with an element of brutishness or incompetence. To be clear, I’m open about economics – I’m content for people to vote themselves into the free market or into socialism; centrally however, maintaining the economic system of 1979 would not have produced the economic vibrancy which followed, or an economy like Sweden’s. Change was needed, though an obsessive and an enthusiast like Thatcher was one of the worst executives to do it.

First an example of cruelty. Contemporary British industry was archaic and wasteful and a sensible and productive future required change, and the unfortunate closure of certain mines and docks. Nevertheless, the speed, the extent and the nature of the industrial change was unnecessary and unnecessarily cruel, most notably because of the brutality with which dissent was suppressed.

For incompetence we have BT. The purpose of the free market is to allow competition: to give business people a free chance at making money, to give customers choice and to lower costs through customers’ purchasing power. With the colours of the free market, the Thatcher government privatised British Telecom but, rather than splitting it into entities which could compete, they produced a private monopoly which has led to hilariously poor service and high costs.

These are important steps. Undoubtedly this process means that these two great organisations of the English-speaking democracies, the British Empire and the United States, will have to be somewhat mixed up together in some of their affairs for mutual and general advantage.

For my own part, looking out upon the future, I do not view the process with any misgivings. I could not stop it if I wished; no one can stop it. Like the Mississippi, it just keeps rolling along. Let it roll. Let it roll on full flood, inexorable, irresistible, benignant, to broader lands and better days.

This was Churchill, speaking on August the 20th, 1940 to the House of Commons.

I have always known that that task was vital. Since last week it has become even more vital than ever. We close our Conference in the aftermath of that sinister utopia unveiled at Blackpool. Let Labour’s Orwellian nightmare of the left be the spur for us to dedicate with a new urgency our every ounce of energy and moral strength to rebuild the fortunes of this free nation.

If we were to fail, that freedom could be imperilled. So let us resist the blandishments of the faint hearts; let us ignore the howls and threats of the extremists; let us stand together and do our duty, and we shall not fail.

This is Thatcher, Speaking to the Tory conference in Brighton on October  the 10th, 1980. People often praise Thatcher’s tenacity and ability, especially in becoming the first female Prime Minister. But Thatcher was, in that respect, a monoculture – without nuance, with nothing of the imagination and imagery which Churchill offered. Diverting attention from her ludicrous abuse of Orwell, Thatcher’s speech is monochromatic and has a disregard for proportionality and measure; using language of an apparently stronger nature than Churchill did when he faced one of the most terrifying dictatorships of history. She presents a Tory-centric universe, in which they can all be messiahs; Churchill, with inestimably more imagination, knew that the river of history would flow without him and without the Tory party; there are no saviours, only actors.

My fingers hovered over the keyboard for a moment, about to write ‘Despite’. However, there is nothing ‘despite’ about the relationship between the above and my discussion of those who celebrate the death of Thatcher.

Foremost, the death of an individual is cause for sobriety, especially with reference to those who have lost someone who was important to them. There are some cases in which death may mean the end of suffering, in which case it can be embraced; in addition, it might be relevant to celebrate the death of a brutal dictator. Nevertheless, it is not death from which people attain freedom and safety, it is the end of tyranny. The people of the UK are no freer, healthier or greater as a result of Thatcher’s death, all it means is that she will no longer be alive for people who loved her, which is cause to be sombre. I have encountered people who are celebrating her death for reasons which include her support of the war in Iraq and because she continued to voice her convictions – being this offended by the views of an elderly woman is pitiful, not indicative of the personal and moral strength which is necessary to maintain a great nation.

This quality reaction is peculiarly poor form on a gross scale, which is unforgivable in itself. Moreover, it marks a dangerous tendency in some of those who are anti-Thatcher and on the left – of being coarse and loud, of holding grudges and generally incubating resentment. This is tiresome but, more urgently, it will bore people with limited time and will offend people of taste, as such, this death-love is love for electoral death.

The left and the anti-Thatcher camp can do better and classier – people deserve better from the left and the anti-Thatcher camp. Crudeness or resentment will not enable those who oppose Thatcher’s policies to take power and install useful and fair policy; decency, humour and imagination will. More urgently, Thatcher’s death means the reanimation of discussion over her policies, and if the left act like Yahoos, the right will win the day.

The garden features many beautiful and fascinating specimens from around the globe. I’m a remarkably poor botanist and really should have taken notes on the plants which interested me. Suffice it to say that I was astounded  by the variety of the plants, while being able to note now these divergent forms had been produced by natural selection: the plants whose flowers are intelligible as coloured versions of leaves — their petals sharing a closer relationship with their predecessors than, for example, a tulip. They own a magnificent tree which, rather than growing upward with a main trunk with new bows branching off (like an oak), had thick fleshy stems which grew in all directions and, as it grew upwards, the lower stems would fall off, leaving a hard desiccated trunk as a record. This variance, which I find outstanding, means nil to natural selection — these two practices are just ways of seeking the sun. One tree presented, on a bowed branch, surrounded by leaves and protective bodies, a colourful, plump and large seed-pod, like a child timidly presenting a newly discovered treasure or an artist drawing back the curtain to show an unfinished creation.

In some ways these plants are unfeeling, in other ways they can be considered heroes. They don’t feel compassion or consider any questions of altruism or wellbeing, at the same time they will fight to produce and nurture their offspring forever, given that they live and there is air, sunlight and nutrients. In a way they are like the first machines which humans created: utterly earnest and selfless, but now humanity wants to create AI, machines which are more like us.

I met another friend later that day. She had been upset by specific stresses, and required companionship. I can say quite seriously that most men, under those stresses, would not have been in the state she was; the corollary is true for her powers of empathy, allowing her to mediate certain social states which most men can’t. Depending on one’s expectations I can be not much of a man — nevertheless I was the necessary male-concrete which she required.

Try to quantify how much time is spent considering issues which are relevant to or which arise due to gender? In how many areas of one’s life is gender a fundamental consideration?

Later I went into town to have some food with friends, they took the bus home afterwards and were surprised that I would be walking from Liverpool town centre to Mossley Hill; I reminded them that I had an overcoat and Radio Four. As I climbed Bold Street I did up the buttons and donned the headphones, arriving part way through a programme on gender, a Brief Natural History of Sex. It explained how a female Komodo Dragon, if alone without males, can produce a clutch of eggs of all males. I learned how crocodile eggs are gendered by the temperature at which they are incubated. I learned that for many types of fish their anatomy means that gender changes are very simple, for some species the largest individual is male and when he dies the largest female will start acting as a male almost immediately and will, after a few days, start producing sperm.

The most interesting feature of the programme was their investigations into the origins of gender. They theorise that the first genders were developed during the inebriated evening which followed the dawn of eukariotic life — this dawn involved certain cells incorporating other living cells, the incorporated parties are now organelles like mitochondria — scientists have found that if two cells which both contain mitochondria are combined the resulting cell will die, meaning that for sexual reproduction to work only one gamete can contain mitochondria; the female.

So I courted a curious feeling as I walked; considering how much attention I and others pay to gender: Female-only shortlists, the Drones, Vogue, GQ, the Virgin Mary, Jesus; how does it feel, in that all this is just a function of Natural Selection, of reproduction? The Sixties, the battle of the sexes, religion, the contortions which we experience over members of the other or our own gender — do you feel manipulated  by evolution, or freed?

Coda: The Media

I heard on the news, on the same day, that there are campaigns in operation which hope to even the ratio of men to women as they appear on the radio and on television. To me this goal is nearly as fatuous as the idea that women should be made to wear a burqa. I move that the principle that women or men can be treated en bloc is a fallacy, when considering media and employment, the functioning unit is the individual and our goal should be to create a system where the individual is treated fairly when applying for a given job. The blogger and YouTube presence Aurini, in his video ‘How to Defeat the Left’, identified a popular narrative: a certain group has a grievance (usually to do with equality) and demands action, usually through law or policy. In many cases the group itself is irrelevant and the form of equality is a construct, leading to inverted priorities. The way in which we can create a better media in Britain will be by giving all individuals access to the best education and training, by inspiring confidence in their own talents, and by creating a truly fair selection process. The actual percentage of women or men who appear on screen or on the radio is irrelevant, why should we care? One’s target should be, simply, to be the best one can.

I think that the most visible example of this is the hijab or burqua as it is exists as a compulsory or prescribed practice. This, I propose, is the action of men who experience the effects of the male libido but wish not to have to manage them — the response is to destroy (or in this case to make invisible) that which affects them: female beauty. Men (and women, of course) understand what it is to find a woman attractive and for it not to be appropriate, prudent, acceptable or desirable to go and introduce oneself. In societies in which women go unveiled, one must simply live with the impropriety and the physical impossibility of talking to every attractive women which one sees, it is expected that we manage our desires. Another approach is to destroy the issue.

This is one of the multitude of matters which are a case of priorities: is the tragedy of encountering and seeing so many women and not being able to approach them a worthy trade-in for living in a society in which both sexes are permitted to expose their faces? The British and my answer is yes. This is not to deny that this approach causes angst, it causes complications (many of which are owned by women) and we have to deal with them.

Ayn Rand, in the speech of John Galt from her book, Atlas Shrugged, notes that many of the totalitarian ideologies which torture humans are a denial of our nature and amount to the wish for a destruction of a certain part of the human person. Galt summarises: Mystics of Spirit, such as religious leaders, wish for the destruction of the mind; Mystics of Muscle, such as Marxists and Fascists, wish for the enslavement of the body. Of course I disagree with the dichotomy, but I accept her axiom; in the case of theistic religion, she identifies how reason can be a painful and complicating capability, forcing us to discard fond beliefs and face reality, something which requires effort — the Mystics of Spirit allow people to destroy their reason to be free of these complications, promising eternal pleasure in an imaginary paradise. Galt moves that these ideologies will claim Utopia, perfection, but that they obscure a wish to alleviate the convolutions of life, through death.

One can observe this desire in Buddhism, where Nirvana, peace, amounts to non-existence, also where Buddhists, rather than managing their desires, destroy them. This is a free choice (given that one adopts Buddhism freely) and is personal. But the tendency can be political, such as when Thatcher abolished the Greater London Council or when Brown dismissed David Nutt; at its most disgusting it is responding to the presence of female sexual pleasure and libido through genital mutilation, at its most inane it is the occupation and dulling of interest through voyeuristic television.

The Destruction-Wish manifests itself in unexpected places, also. In reading the Lucy Poems for university, and his Prelude, I’ve noticed how Wordsworth delights in freedom from of consciousness:

‘No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course,
With rocks, and stones, and trees.’

Wordsworth, A Slumber did my spirit seal, ‘The Lucy Poems’

If the reader will have to forgive a popular reading (among innumerable) of this stanza: Wordsworth speaks of how Lucy, his mysterious inamorata, is incognizant and inanimate; at peace one might say. Lucy is dead, having died in another poem, our poet upholds her peace and stillness because in death she cannot be hurt or betrayed. Wordsworth realises that by loving her and wanting her he must game with nemesis, there will be a chance that she could be attracted to another, they could come to hate each other, she could become someone else as she grows older — by destroying her, Wordsworth can avoid all these complications.

My own addition to this interpretation may be strange (or unoriginal, if so, my apologies) I suggest that Lucy represents a sort of perfect-Romantic or Übermench of the natural world. This kind high level of integration with nature would require a massive surrender of personality — Lucy has to die in order to achieve this, or that which Wordsworth is describing is indistinguishable from death.

Faranheit 451 is a polemic literary example in which the annihilation of something is warranted by it’s complicating factors. For those who haven’t read it, the book depicts a future Britain in which the firemen, rather than saving people, their houses and property, are called to the houses of people who own books (which are illegal) and burn them.

‘These are all novels, all about people that never existed, the people that read them it makes them unhappy with their own lives. Makes them want to live in other ways they can never really be.’

And this is why books are so potent, yet so reviled by dictators, and shunned by those who would rather have their mental faculties appeased than challenged.

Yet, one must observe that most of us opt for the close cousin of this destruction every night; at least for me, to lay my head and sleep is to experience what Lucy did for her consciousness. And, when I lay my head and it fills with failings, considerations, wishes and problems as if they were draining from the rest of my body because of my prostration — when sleep is denied — I realise why some people choose to destroy something which possesses an arbitrarily large quotient of large power and nuance; to, as Ayn Rand said, choose not to think. 

Drugs are a curious consideration within this subject, mostly because their affects are so disparate between the users. Alcohol is an empirical candidate for a destroyer of the cognitive faculties, though one should find it difficult to make that claim having heard Christopher Hitchens speak while redolently drunk. The best candidate for a categorical drug in this aspect is heroin, which, from the accounts which I have heard and read, is a substitute for life; I recommend Junkie by the astounding William S. Burroughs. Burroughs, however, was a productive and an astoundingly inventive writer — the question being whether he was like this during or outside his periods of addiction; Naked Lunch, he claims, was written while semi-conscious during a junk-stupor. Hunter S. Thompson never used heroin (as far as I have read) but mixed elephantine quantities of depressants, stimulants and hallucinogens like he would lemon juice, tomato juice and vodka; his case was tragic in that the fundamental drugs of his creative process are reckoned to have, ultimately, blunted his creative edge. Contrarily, of the two men it was he that avoided the artificial-life drug that killed himself, Burroughs lived to 87 — however, Thompson was suffering from serious illness and pain when he shot himself.

‘I would feel real trapped in this life if I didn’t know I could commit suicide at any time.’

Speaking of pain; when one is aware of an injury there is no function in feeling more pain than one has to. But, pain is there for a reason — one can imagine what it would be like to live without pain forever, or even to take painkillers preemptively; this is rather similar to what happens to a society which burns its books, or to people who do. Reason delivers the pleasures of poetry, but reason can hurt – and do you know why it hurts? For the same reason as humans feel hunger; when it pangs one needs sustenance. The result of not eating for long enough is clear, and it is the fond acquaintance of what happens if people and societies treat reason in this manner.

Live adventurously. So much which is true about life exists with displeasure or inconvenience as an associated possibility, so much which is astounding or ingenious is also dangerous. This is true for free speech, democracy, empiricism — some examples, like free speech, are now heroic and stout pillars of civilisation; others, like ‘degenerate art’, are piddling foibles in the atrophied mind of a censor. Distrust those who tell you that faith or will can counteract the pronouncements of reason; the attitude is sanguine in the hordes who’re pacified by television, to those who would tell people in benighted parts of the world that polio-vaccine will make them infertile — to choose to live like this is to choose death. Death (so far as we can tell) is inevitable, to waste a second is to die for a second. Choose life.

– Homer, The Odyssey: chapter 2, lines 146-153

27/IX/12 4:04 – So, I decide to head, after a look at another bookshop, to the library for another campaign against The Odyssey. As I walked I noticed a friend of mine in conversation and I carried on, then decided that I should speak to her, stopped to talk to another friend who was also in the area then lent against a tree until she arrived. We decided to get a coffee in the library cafe, which I was owed (in her words), and we sat down to discuss national identity and music.

Suddenly she shrieked, got up and embraced a man who entered the venue and they spoke rapidly together – it was a moment of unabashed and unconditional gratitude, two friends who were pleased to see each other after my friend’s long stay abroad. The new arrival bought us all a coffee (my third in the last four hours), they caught up, and we discussed sexism and other important topics.

Then the new arrival left to seek a train. I looked at my friend; When you said to me that we should have a coffee, was this what you expected? I said, indicating the multitudinous cups on the table. Not really, she said, it was rather a lot. I considered; Ah, the occasional act of excess is beneficial. She then followed the trend and left too, to meet another of her friends– I decided that it was time for me to leave, to find the venue at which I was due at five with generous time to waste in getting lost.

* * *

12:23 – I’m sitting in the Egg Cafe, Liverpool, overlooking the sundry skyline; with a cappuccino and a slice of cake large enough to choke a horse – from where I sit, choosing to look away from the purple and florally-painted joists and the other inmates, I can see out to the metropolis, the glass Anderson-shelter of Liverpool Central Station, the courts, banks and businesses; buildings which look to the future or lament the past, and the occasional monstrosity which seems to lament nothing and look nowhere.

I’m a student now, of English, the novel and freelancing will have to fit in. Beside my laptop is a copy of Homer’s The Odyssey – a work of literary brilliance alongside almost an impenetrable density when presented to a moderate Classics-novice such as me. This difficulty is compounded by the fact that the edition which I am borrowing from the Sydney Jones Library imposes the verse form in which the original was written in Ancient Greek upon the modern translation. I’ve always been in favour of setting ambitious targets, and can testify for their occasional efficacy: yesterday I set myself the target of reading fifty pages of the tome, I got to seven. This is not to say that I only read seven pages, more that I read the pages up to that point several times before I felt that I was actually digesting the book with my literary ectoplasm. Something gives me the impression that this venue will be a good one in which to begin my second attempt, I shan’t add another fifty pages to yesterdays target – the relationship between ambition and suicide is close, subtle and dangerous.

I shouldn’t say that I have explored this city to any great extent, but I think that I have caught the feel of few of it’s quirks; the bookshops are certainly of fine quality. Today I visited News from Nowhere – the name suggests, existentialism, Nihilism or Dada? the opposite is true (I know, now, that the name is taken from the book by the socialist William Morris, as displayed in the shop – in the story he describes a society with no war, no private property, no crime, no class and without many other ills of this type, which, to lean on Christopher Hitchens, sounds like Nowhere, to me). Some bookshops don’t label their shelves, some alphabetise, some organise according to genre, and News from Nowhere categorises it’s wares according to an exhaustive and partisan system: LGBT, Banker Bashing, Benefactors of Capitalism, Arab Spring etcetera; I located the second-hand shelf and bought two books by Orwell, for which I tendered the princely sum of two pounds sterling to the bespectacled woman on the till who gave the impression that she was the most kindly individual within a three-kilometre radius.

Yesterday I patronised some other bookshops. Reids of Liverpool is an establishment of quality, I walked in and approached the desk; seeing a man who looked like a version of Lemmie from Motorhead with the gain turned down a little. When he opened his mouth to address me he spoke with a kindly mid-American accent, telling me that he was just watching the shop for it’s owner and that he could not take me to the hemi-obscure titles which are required for my English course.

Henry Bohn Books has a impressing vibe associated with it; as I enter I see a round faced man in conversation with the proprietor concerning classical music, specifically with reference to particular recordings of Mendelsson concertos; two men wearing suit-jackets and mackintoshes stand together and, as is the birthright of any man, talk about war. I list the titles for which I’m looking to the owner and he charges off to the shelves, shredding his finger across the backs of books, commenting rapidly about the additions and the tomes which he doesn’t have or which he has but which are ‘in a box upstairs’. I asked whether they had any William S Burroughs, but they he said no, very few people have Burroughs. I secure a copy of the Marlowe which is required, settle up for the Norman Mailers which I located on the discount shelves and pass the gentlemen – now talking about tank-battles in North Africa – on my way out.

1:40 –

The sun rose up, leaving the beautiful water,
Into the bronze-covered heaven, to shine for the immortals
And also for mortal men upon the grain-giving earth.

– Homer, The Odyssey: chapter 3, lines 1-3

We don’t write like this anymore, do we? It’s an interesting consideration: to imagine a narrative in which the gods so readily stop by for a drink, in which the mortal an immortal worlds so readily collide. I’m sure whether I’m correct in saying that these gods, the gods of Homer, are unashamedly anthropomorphic, like proles with supreme powers; while the gods of the monotheisms (deities of lucid, terrifying and often hilarious human tenets) stake a claim to perfection, abstract divinity and perhaps even the platonic absolute morality. I’m not qualified, and I suppose that few are qualified, to act as arbiter between the civilisations which are affected and produced by these systems of belief, but it should be an interesting difference to split.

That which I think is important, however, is that the monotheistic gods wish to occupy the territory of perfection but behave like monsters, children, humans and heroes; the gods of the classics behave, speaking crudely, as one would expect humans with supreme powers to behave. One might be able to claim that the more dangerous belief is the one in which it is claimed that an entity and it’s doctrines are perfect when actually they’re human; as compared to an imperfect being and doctrine accepting imperfection or even not making a claim. The more mature activity is to look at ourselves – the first increment of progress is diagnosis – rather than creating creators and controllers who are really ourselves, just disguised beneath a thin veneer of infallibility. News form Nowhere tells us that a place of perfection is a nowhere, Nirvana is nothingness; the belief that perfection is in possession is the end of the line.

Twyford on my way home, a transportation exodus, people leave Henley and dissipate. A guard shouts information from the opposite platform to mine, over two rail tracks. Stay behind the yellow line, he orders. He informs them that there will be a fast train to London, not advertised on the departure board, specially for them.

I’m now sitting in an amply sized carriage beside a woman wearing a crêpe de chine skirt. People sit back, silently enjoying the flow of cool air through the windows, all of which are open. At Reading nearly everyone leaves and I have nearly all of the carriage to myself; I lay back and rest my feet, job done.

29/VI/12 – I move to the standard class carriage and enter, slotting myself into an unoccupied space, waves of hat-wearing souls appear on the platform, probably from the arrival of other trains which terminate here, adding to the carriage. It’s now about full, though not as densely packed as a London tube train – these southerners insist on adopting a honeycomb formation with 1.5ft of free space around each person. Hampers, hats, badges, and blazers – the most ornate I have seen up to now: terracotta, rough wool and every conceivable choice of stripe and hue.

Not a soul alights at the station before Henley. Then as Henley arrives everyone gathers their hampers and bags and either curses their lack of a brolly or unfurls one. We then file in the same arrangement as before to the ticket office, while also adopting a sort of tortoise formation with our umbrellas, moving from the land of trains into the town. We then progress, umbrellas still deployed, through the settlement and to the river, which we cross with the racecourse on our right, and after the Leander Club, arrive at the Stewards’ Enclosure. As I walk, I notice all the ornate hats, divided fifty-fifty between the traditional straw and the more striking fabrics, smiles; and rowing teams in their polo shirts, with a unified colour, walking in step like squadrons.

This area is green, spacious and ordered;

Those attending the Regatta in the Stewards’ Enclosure must dress in accordance with long-established tradition.

Gentlemen are required to wear lounge suits, or jackets or blazers with flannels, and a tie or cravat.

Ladies are required to wear dresses or skirts with a hemline below the knee and will not be admitted wearing divided skirts, culottes or trousers of any kind. Similarly, no one will be admitted to the Stewards’ Enclosure wearing shorts or jeans.

Whilst not a requirement, it is customary for ladies to wear hats.

I stand at the finish line behind a chap with pink trousers, and watch my first live race finish, women’s skulls. As each boat progresses across the crowds, it provokes a pre-emptive wave of applause, sometimes with one breaker or with two if one boat has a generous lead.

I decide to go to the grandstand, and sit high. I ask the gentleman next to me about the way in which the Umpire warns crews about ‘their steering’; he tells me that this is because each team must stay on its own side of the course – Bucks or Berks; Buckinghamshire or Berkshire, the counties which are separated by the Thames over this stretch. We watch as, during one sculling race, a young woman at the back of her boat has to deal with an oar jumping from its rowlock. The boats were incredibly close when this happened, with the one in question slightly behind. It is excruciating to watch her oar become trapped under the craft and, without her power, to watch as the competition speeds away while their boat limps onward as she tries to regain her implement. Finally, she manages to get word to her team, so they slow, allowing her to replace the oar – to cross the line at a remote second place. I discussed this incident with those sat next to me; Terrible shame. I said, Not for Borlase, he replied, referring to the team who had just taken the race by a spectacular lead.

It is important to note the strange and poetic nature of a boat’s motion through the water: The rowers or scullers dip the gargantuan tips of the oars into the drink and use them to surge the boat forward, they then pluck them from the fluid and rotate them by 90 degrees to minimise the air resistance, pulling them like blades as they retake. But as they do so the weight of their bodies – moving on a mobile seat in the direction of travel – mean that, according to Newton, the boat slows dramatically, riding up in the water; ready to descend and surge once more.

As each race develops, the commentator will periodically announce the rate of striking, I can guess what this means, but I am not sure. An amiable-looking man sits behind me, so I ask him. He explains that someone will be positioned on the bank with a timepiece, they will be charged with counting the number of oar strokes which each team is achieving per minute. He has dark hair and a relatively sunned face and wears a double-breasted navy suit jacket, to it is pinned a yellow badge like mine, alongside a round silvery pendant with a pink cross carrying the writing – Leander 2012 – a member of the Leander Club, dons of rowing.

As he answered he noticed that I was taking notes and asked what I was doing; I explained that I was writing an article on the occasion. He took interest in this and expanded on his previous answer. He explained that the average rate of striking for a crew is 33, and that crews will start at a painful 45 per minute to drop to their average and, when they are sufficiently close to the finish, may reach a greater speed again without having to concern themselves with maintaining energy. Also, he explained, the coxswain can institute a burst of speed, 10 strokes at perhaps 39 per minute – this being the functional unit of the race, through which a crew will attempt to take the lead. This is what the current leaders seem to be doing over their opponents, Mitsubishi.

Mr Leander also told me that the boat will move faster according to the extent to which the crew match their stroke exactly and, interestingly, if they are good friends. He also told me that a coach and crew member will have to understand and utilise gearing – the length of oar which is allowed to stick out from the boat through the rowlock – the more oar protrudes from the boat, the longer the stroke, though a smaller crew member may find it difficult to handle a bigger length due to the leverage. Finally, he amazed me by saying that, not only do the rowers or scullers rotate their oars to minimise the wind resistance but, if there is a draft from behind them, they will present the paddles’ wide edge like a sail to the wind to make use of its force.

His team races now. The classic wave of applause erupts across as Leander lead by a boat length and a half. Their boat is directly ahead of us; my compadre emits a strong but restrained: Here here. They cross the finish with a favourable victory; that’s how it’s done; he observes. He lifts up his foot and shows me his pink Leander socks – his team are the only one to be represented by single colour. He then departs for luncheon, wishing my article well – Thank you for the information, I say as we shake hands.

I decide to walk the length of the Stewards’ Enclosure. One gentleman belongs to a club whose colours are black and yellow, meaning that with those stripes lining his blazer, he looks rather like a walking warning. Then I glance at a man-giant, chinos, blazer, polo shirt untucked, stubbly and with long blonde hair – a rower.

The Stewards’ Enclosure runs along the length of the course, for about a quarter of its length, ending at the finishing line. I’m standing at the closest point to the start of the course. To my right is the Regatta Enclosure, open to the public, but with a curious group of Stewards’ Enclosure people who stand in the Regatta Enclosure to make use of their phones, which is prohibited in the Stewards’. One constantly has to resist the temptation to reach into the pocket and check the phone – in a way, it’s liberating.

The atmosphere is excited and convivial; the sun makes its efforts known through a hole in the clouds. Pleasure barges, quiet, large and stately, amble down this stretch of river, separated from the race by a sturdy wooden boom. There’s quite a wind, my hat is pressed quite tightly to my head. Men are mainly grey, white or navy, women can be any colour imaginable, which is often the case, also with men in blazers. Only Pimms Served – declares a large sign above one of the bars.

Power; muscles ball, the gruh of the oars, the cox hoarsely yelling encouragement. The rowers directly juxtapose the spectators – vests, shorts, nylon, sweat – eight great men and a tiny woman, almost vicious in the tone of her encouragement. Or is there juxtaposition? We make an effort to dress smartly, they make an effort to exert themselves. The fact that the rowers and scullers, heroes of the occasion, would not comply with the dress code enough to be admitted to the Enclosure is rather telling. It would be silly for them to wear knee-length dresses or lounge suits for their sport, as such it is not about what you wear, it is about attitude.

Sometimes different crews create a different sound as they plunge the oars into the water; Molesey’s sound an impacting shush, Oxford Brookes produce a guttural ghub.

– Luncheon –

 *    *    *

 27/VI/12 11:03 – I’m sitting at my desk; to my left is an open window, a black vista. However, the window does let in the sublime air of this type of night which, for some reason, tastes a lot better than usual. After a day like today – humid, then clear, then overcast and humid – evening appears and the temperature drops, some of the humidity condenses, producing an atmosphere that one can savour. I noticed it as I walked into the garden, with the bats upon the wing, clarity; that which we should always do if we were actually to live our existences to their full capacity, savour the air. In return for the air I’m pumping out a soft amplification of Beethoven’s 29th piano sonata, Hammerklavier.

To my right is a Bloody Mary, in a highball glass, on the rocks. I made it with the last measure of vodka from the first bottle of vodka which I ever bought. It was on the night after I saw The Rum Diary at the cinema in Rednal. It’s strange, I suddenly had the idea that some vodka would be a good idea; the film was good too, so I stopped in at the supermarket which is on the way. This is amusing because, by chance, the assistant who served me, in all my months there, only ever served me with spirits or matches. And this is the last measure, in this glass, this particular vodka eon comes to a close.

I remember quite precisely that I sat down in front of my computer on that night, full of enthusiasm, rage at the state of society, maybe love, with a measure of that drink, but found that I couldn’t write, or that there was nothing to write. Fiction, non-fiction, writing – it’s a strange and twisted operation, and one of the main reasons for continuing with pieces which are terrible or non-existent at a given point is that I know I have genuinely taken writing from that stage to a vague resemblance of readability.

Also, on that night, as I poured myself a measure, I found that I no longer liked neat vodka. In my days of indestructibility – the spikes, the partially shaven head – I used, for some reason, to enjoy neat vodka. No longer; but it has to be. This me, the ex-Philip Anselmo-esque metalhead, can actually taste the nuances of a single malt, rather than only being able to differentiate one from a blended whiskey. What this meant was that I had a moderate quantity of vodka with not much by way of a real use, which meant action, action in the form of Bloody Marys.

Today, I spent most of my time seeing if I could find someone to accompany me to the Henley Regatta on Friday. I asked a number of people whose scene I thought that it would be. One friend I asked didn’t know of Henley or the Henley Regatta; another friend coveted the offer, he is in the Cambridge University rowing club. I asked quite a number of people, friends, acquaintances, casual acquaintances, secondary school paramours, though nobody could make it, which was a damned shame.

The process of searching for a compadre was interesting in itself, somehow amorous, but also disturbing. I asked one young woman with whom I went on a visit to Auschwitz, another whom I’ve only met outside work once. I asked one young woman who I met through the Religious Society of Friends, but discovered that I have no contact information for her, and that her Facebook account has disappeared; has she died? Got bored of Facebook? Or just bored of me?

My cousin Nick, a member of the Stewards, gave me this opportunity in response to a conversation which we had online. The Stewards Club is a private association of a few thousand members, with a ten-year waiting list. Members have access to a private enclosure on the Berkshire side of the river, adjacent to the finishing line – so rather a treat for me.

Nick and I had a brief exchange over the tax affairs of Jimmy Carr (which originated as a response to my post on immigration.). My cousin asked me about morality. I replied saying that the responsibility of the Prime Minister should not include moralising; rather he should concentrate, with the Chancellor, on adjusting the tax system so as to make avoidance more arduous. This was, I said, because people’s moralities differ so drastically, that individuals should be expected to obey the law, rather than to obey the asserted morality of another, such as the Prime Minister.

On the floor, in bags and sometimes separate, on surfaces, is my luggage for tomorrow. I have to make it obvious so that I can minimise my chances of forgetting anything. I make a list too. I’ve established that my mind is so full of considerations over art, love and building a just city, that there exists a high probability that I will forget something important. I take two measures to address this: I write out lists of what I need and where it needs to be, I print out timetables and maps, so that I’m so swamped with information that I should have to make an effort to forget something. I’m also in the habit of having a small panic when I’m on the verge of leaving, which causes me to search myself to make sure that all is present and correct.

This is not to say that I no longer forget things; there is a certain type of distraction which sometimes causes me to leave things in places, the kind of interest which cuts the train of planning and allows me to leave without what I needed. On one occasion, as my train was pulling into Birmingham New Street, I was so absorbed in my efforts to produce a cool and moody image for an attractive young woman with whom I shared the carriage that I left my guitar in the luggage rack. Smart, aren’t I?

There is now a sizeable corona of flies bumbling around the single, unshaded fluorescent light in the middle of my ceiling – I really should do something about this. They’re tugged towards the addictive light, like we are towards celebrity, to our paramours, maybe to our ambitions. The difference being that these flies and bugs can reach the light and loiter around it, where there isn’t really an analogue in our case. Heartbreakingly, the two crane flies which were enthusiastically bobbing around have both been snared by the adhesive webs of their fellow arachnids. My plan is to extinguish the light and then to leave my stereo on, hopefully causing them to congregate there, rather than around me.

*    *    *

I’m sitting in Café Buendia for refuelling; coffee. It’s a fantastic place, perhaps half the width of a normal establishment of its function, and right now it is chock-full. I would come just for the froth on the cappuccino; the almond croissants are better even than those in the parliamentary café of Portcullis House.

I was sitting on the Buckinghamshire side of the river, eating an apple, when a woman approached and asked whether she could ask me a question. She wore a beige, belted mackintosh and I would put her at around 60. I assented and answered her question, saying that the barge opposite was indeed the Queen’s. She thanked me and commented: I saw you and said to myself: ‘I knew that that young man would be able to help me, as he is wearing a nice yellow badge’.

– Post luncheon –

I’m now about as far as I can get towards the finishing line. The sun gleefully warms the skin; smiles and pretty frocks flock to see the climax of the races. I’ve just noticed, as one team rowed the length of the course to get to the starting point, that, in this case, they exhale en masse as well. For this race London and Durham will combine to form a single crew.

Beside the boom, in the space of river which remains after the racecourse has been enclosed, a family have lashed together two canoes, on which they placed a table and from which they quaff their Pimms and take their luncheon. The house which exists adjacent to Phyllis Court, with a lovely mooring at the front, has a structure attached which resembles a garage for boats, at water level, with a covered area on top.

I recline in a deckchair on the river bank, the sun places a burgeoning heat onto the ground, driving out the moisture from the rain of previous and producing a short-term humidity, pale suits and chinos are ablazen. Women tackle the problem of the soft ground in a variety of ways, some wear flats, some seem to manage in stilettos. I saw one woman wearing stilettos with a plastic item attached to each heel, which acted to widen the base.

Noisy and aggressive muscular Russians from St. Petersburg vs. the calmer and lighter Oxford Brookes. The Russians, in their semi-transparent orange vests, row with a sort of brutal impatience, and lead Brookes by about a boat length.

The boat tents are after the finish line on the side of the river, meaning that each team will have to row the length of the river to get into position to start the race – which is better than having to traverse the length of the course after the race. The teams row and scull with a sort of louche, latent power, making an economy for the race ahead, especially the women, who seem to be ably holding back an explosive effort.

Occasionally one will see small private boats being rowed around the river, with a common design. They are made from a pleasingly shiny dark wood with long and finely made oars. The rower sits in the middle with a seat which moves on runners, their passengers sit on a cushioned seat at the back, controlling a rudder with two ropes.

In a race a boat can lead another by a margin (of increasing size) measured in feet, then a canvass (five feet), then a number of boat lengths, from half onwards, then easily.

I stand outside the protection of the Stewards’ Enclosure, at somewhere inside the first mile of the course. Behind me booms the bass, trumpet, drums and banjo of a jazz band. I have just had a very short meeting with an old school friend, about four or five years my senior. I don’t really know what to do on these occasions, when one sees an old friend but when they haven’t yet seen one; so I called his name and tapped his arm – he looked with disdain and then recognised me. I told him about my writing and he told me about his law degree; ‘A long way from Builth Wells High School’ he commented, ‘Look at you, Oli! Stewards’ Enclosure.’ he said as he noticed my badge. We wished each other well and departed, having told the other his plans.

I am quite near to the start now. Between me and the water is a solid mass of picnickers and, separated from me by a hedge and on the other side, blazers and drinking. The sun, still set to full volume, creates a vivacious atmosphere. These people are happy, they seek adventure and a good time with their companions; without battles or scorn or conflict, the only battle is sport. As such, they create an aesthetic masterpiece.

Eton is rowing the course now; they provoke jeering cheering applause, growing, burgeoning, people move from their reclining position in their deck-chairs to stand upright. [At this point, the writing in my notebook becomes incomprehensible, so some of the adjectives may not be the absolutely true and original account.] The wind picks up too, and I steady my hat; the energy of these people, encouraging jeers, cries of Go Eton, a brawny cantata of noise affection and appreciation.

I seem to be among some kind of mass migration; ah… it’s teatime.

– Tea –

Beside the finish line is positioned a row of bar stools, which is where I sit now. As I relax, the stream of sizeable barges moves along the free half of the river in both directions. This is teatime, a hiatus, no races; people are using this time to chill, to stoke up, to watch the lazy traffic and to prepare themselves for the next set of tense races. After closer examination, most of the domestic houses on the opposite side of the river have boat garages – whatever one’s political views, they do look rather fine.

Jettisoning my politics, momentarily; sometimes the acidic frameworks of nihilism and determinism can make a rigid or egalitarian ideal or system seem non-buoyant. When those ideas are absent, one of the few directives which has any authority can be to have a good time – and these pesky southerners seem to do so with an able and generous degree of prowess.

I’ve entered the prize tent. A picture of the Regatta in 1966, it looks like a particularly wet music festival. 1956 – no houses on the banks. I witness a series of large and ornate trophies. The Grand Challenge Cup: 2.5 ft, silver; perhaps the most beautiful being the prize for the one of the women’s sculls, a brooch formed by crossed oars bound with a precise silver-gilt bow.

 – Post Tea –

A red kite rides the thermals directly above the racecourse; I wonder what it will make of the race. Abingdon (a school to which many pupils of my mother’s prep school are sent) vs. Gonzaga, America; we’ve only just started to be able to see them, black shapes on the water’s surface, but have heard commentary on the PA system while they were invisible, building a frustrating expectation. Abingdon is somehow able to decrease its stroke rate while increasing its lead, perhaps something to do with gearing; the tension layers. Separate rowers now become visible, and movement. Go on Abingdon. Go on both.The applause develops, rippling muscles, open mouths. Abingdon – pink and black; Gonzaga – purple and white. Abingdon takes it by a length, then the Umpire boat ambles past.

*    *    *

28/VI/12 10:56 – I’m on the train now, which was unusually punctual. The air today, a gross exaggeration and mutation of the air last night’s, is probably more humid than I have ever felt it, wavering between rain and low cloud constantly; it feels unnourishing to breathe, but offers a certain comfort to the skin. Arriva Trains Wales have given us two carriages today, what generosity!

1:14 – On my second and far more luxurious train now. The company has fitted onboard screen-based entertainment systems to the back of each seat; the fare is varied, one can choose tat television or Yeats on audiobook. While it seems handy, a pessimist may predict a state in which trains resemble the spaceship in Wall-E, in which the passengers sit, isolated, absorbed in their personal, singular entertainment system.

I have just been mobbed by some exceedingly drunk people. They saw me, noticed my straw trilby hat and flopped over,

‘Bleeergh – lok ud ‘im – Wheeereeeeer.’

Another one arrived and half collapsed on me, nearly hitting me with his head. ‘He – yoofrum Inglund?’

‘As it happens, I’ve come from Wales.’

‘Gluuuuur – We like yuh hat.’

‘Thank you, I appreciate that.’

After that they left me alone, and the intoxicated and depraved episode was closed, though I could still hear their occasional outbursts at other passengers, usually women, act as punctuation.

1:38 – A ticket officer has now started scolding the drunk person – he sat in his seat, drinking Stella, which the buffet car should not have sold him, and mumbling incoherencies at unfortunate passers by. The ticket officer posses the question, ‘Where would you get the money for your Stella if we didn’t work and pay our taxes?’ – Is this a little outside his remit?

He’s thrown off the train; the officer says ‘Smile for the CCTV on your way out.’ He walks away from the carriage, peppering his speech with f…s, now hounding and following the ticket officer, now standing with his leather-trussed mutt on the platform.

3:06 – Suddenly the train accelerates and shudders into a vista of deciduous trees, long grass and Romantic painting brooks. We’re here, the South, again.

 *    *    *

The most notable character of the Regatta was that it was fine and fun and jollity, a sterling day. The second is of a slightly more political nature. I notice, in a variety of situations, that a general and low-level animosity can be present among people, that individuals can impress a sense of antagonism and competition, aggression without any provocation. The Stewards’ Enclosure is one of the few places in which this tendency is not present. My theory is that these people have nothing which they need to prove – inside the Enclosure there is no labour market, no need to show off one’s wealth or strength or fashion, we all have a yellow badge, and we’re where we need to be; we can relax, we have achieved what is necessary. In that sense, the Enclosure is a temporary classless society, an egalitarian paradise. The economist Milton Friedman once quoted an acquaintance of his, an ex-communist, who stated that: Socialism will be possible when everyone is wealthy enough to have two servants – which, one might say, is a crude approximation of the Stewards’ Enclosure. The experience was refreshing, while simultaneously depressing in that I had to imagine the return to public places in which people are aggressive without provocation, and in which people erect a wall of misanthropy to protect them from the possible misanthropy of others.

Confidence is an extremely defining quantity, one which the people in the Enclosure sweat. A failure of confidence is corrosive for an individual, both internally and externally; such as when an individual, because of the nature of their education or upbringing, is convinced that they cannot achieve what they really can; and such as, perhaps more corrosively, when children of poor means scorn those who have the opportunity to learn a musical instrument or who read.

One could say therefore, that society could nurture its citizens far more effectively if people were able to engender a greater esteem and confidence – so that when an individual is presented with a person or situation which is their superior, that their response should be the desire for self-improvement rather than to disparage the success of those before them; then to desert the fraternities which revel in each other’s under-achievement.

To an extent, the British education system has a tendency to produce two broad categories of people: those who, when given the imperative ‘Jump.’, will reply ‘How high?’ and those who will reply ‘Why?’ Confidence is the quantity which fissures these two responses.

The racecourse, taken from the finish line.

OMC – 5/VII/12

However, he did not have to choose a policy which was so peculiarly unedifying with which to gain more electoral favour. In addition, this seems to be case of electoral reverse-engineering. Rather than having his party formulate a manifesto and submit it to the electorate so that they can vote for Labour or not according to their opinions, Miliband has taken a guess on what will excite the electorate, choosing this particular Blairite anathema and considering it for manifesto membership.

I have two main disagreements with the idea that people are now justified in fearing immigration in its current form; political and social.

My political reason for finding myself unable to oppose immigration is the net economic benefit which immigration contributes to the United Kingdom. Essentially, as cited today on the World at One by an industry spokesman, immigrants work more than Britons and consume public services to a lesser extent — they give, we take. So, what is the problem? (If these facts are proved incorrect, I retract everything.)

Concerning why certain people do not like immigration, or feel that immigration is damaging in spite of the evidence; it is probably the result of the natural tribal and xenophobic tendencies which exist in the human individual — to this extent xenophobes are blameless, human nature dictates that we fear outsiders. Therefore, the greatest misdemeanor is on the part of politicians like Miliband who do not suffer from any xenophobic delusions but who finds himself, having previously been an encouraging progressive presence, belly down and peering up with a submissive smile before the bigots.

But, says Miliband, we should attend to their concerns. Should we? No. One should devote no energy in attending to concerns which are not based in reality or on any kind of evidence. To take action in this way is a little like formulating a policy to tackle the problem of horses using telekineses to destroy the ozone layer, in response to a large enough number of people expressing their concerns. The problem is mind-forged, politicians shouldn’t pander to virtual fears. It would not be such a travesty if, to solve the imaginary problem of immigration, that the solution were imaginary too — like casting a spell on the telekinetic horses. Instead, methods through which we can tackle the non-existent perils of immigration are very real: ranging from Miliband’s amusing and redundant recommendations to harsh restrictions of human liberty, imposed according to an individual’s nation of birth rather than upon a personal choice.

Socially, my thoughts on the immigration can be explained by my reaction to a Facebook comment. A friend of a friend of mine had shared the fabricated story which claimed that Muslims had been given lesser sentences than British criminals for equatable crimes. The exchange ended with the person who shared the story stating that he was simply favouring an ‘England for the English’ — a remarkably astigmatic idea.

The term ‘England’ originates form ‘Angles’, Germanic settlers who migrated to Britain during the 5th and 6th centuries; ‘Britain’ derives from the Roman name for these islands. This is to say that England or Britain or the English or the British are not some pure ‘master race’ or culture. Britain has assimilated numerous components; linguistic, cultural, racial, from immigration and exploration, and I would move that the comparative cultural, economic and literary success of the British nation is owed to this hybrid vigor. Don’t think that this process is finished, Britain is Britain because immigration is a continuous process. Britannica will avert her eyes and disown these islands if we end or neuter this process.

I want broadly sensible individuals like Miliband not to take their inspiration from people like this, rather to assemble their arguments and policies according to logic and evidence. But many people have concerns about immigration, an opponent may claim — I really don’t care how many people have these worries; a crowd doesn’t qualify something with sense. For people of awareness to grovel before ideas which are so clearly based upon prejudice is a gross and contorted transgression, especially when in Milband’s retrospective and self-flagellatory style.

I’ll keep posting articles here, but I’ll do it with a somewhat lower frequency from now on. The experiences of every day remind me how little I know and how little I’ve read, so I want to devote more time to reading. Also, I want to work on my next book. But, dear reader, stick around, I will maintain the gibberish.

From hence, I’ll have to see what happens, keep striving for beauty, and see how long this uncharacteristically long run of good fortune holds. I’m an author, surprisingly.

This is my book:–

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Faux-ebook/dp/B0084UMRPE

It’s called Faux, you may like it. Tell your friends, drop me a ‘like’, maybe share, maybe review.

Permissum bonus vicis susipio.

*    *    *

The Sounth East train ambles past the mixed conifers and deciduous trees, through home county settlement after home county settlement — Ascot, Long Cross. The red-brick, leafy panorama, punctuated with an overly large vehicle or sports car causes the deferential but visceral memory to emerge – this is my old home, the south. Virginia Waters. I’ll change at Twickenham, then go on to Hampton, to my cousin’s as a way-point before I go on to Wimbledon, a VIP no less, for the premiere of ‘Common Ground’ — a film on the history of Wimbledon from a sporting perspective. Egham. The question is: Why is an inexperienced fool like me attending a film premiere among the primates of the sporting world? – Networking. An editor friend of mine, a generous one who has looked over a number of my pieces, edited the script of the film which I will watch. She would have attended this function but couldn’t make the date, so she had me invited; it was a kind gesture, and was generous of the organisation.

6:07 – I was annoyed; because I had already missed my earlier (and more preferable) train; trying to buy a ticket in Hampton station is a strange and trying pastime. I inserted my card and all seemed OK, then the machine claimed an error; I tried again, same error, and again. Then I realised that the problems started when I let go of the card. I jammed the card into the machine and held it in place while I keyed in my PIN with the other hand.

I see a few other people who I could tell – by their conversation – were attending the premiere too. The ticket officers behind me keep switching rapidly between crime and English history in their conversation.

6:22 – I’m slightly trepidatious about the approaching social gathering. Frankly, sport is not a particularly rabid interest of mine. For the last few weeks I have been sitting with a sheet of paper with pictures of the honoured guests and their names, aiming to learn them all like I would have done for a school test. I hope that my memory will be sufficient in the exam situation.

6:30 – Today feels remarkably short because I’ve spent so much time on the train: 8.5h as it happens. Will people talk to me, will they care? Ah…the river, deeper we travel into the metropolis; the train shuddering as we approach Wimbledon – all centre-lines lead to Wimbledon; shooting, croquette, riding, tennis; this is one of the spiritual origins of the noble ideologies of fair-play and sporting honour which are sometimes still expressed when sport is played. Part of the intention of this motion picture is to condense this sporting ideology then to disseminate it to schools in the area as the Olympics beckons. ‘The next station is Wimbledon.’ It would appear that it is crunch time, wish me luck comrades!

6:55 – Smooth jazz, Roman lanterns, Dinner Jackets and my first-ever in-the-flesh red carpet. It repels me with a kind of overbearing esteem. This is what news-papers and television stations spend so much time reporting. A live saxophonist! Was that Lawrie Sanchez on the red carpet? I’ve never seen sartorial efforts on par with those which are being executed tonight. I see the people from the station and experiment with how long I can leave it, remaining outside to watch the arrivals, before I have go inside.

7:10 – It seems that no one can separate a cinema from the heavy scent of popcorn which laces the air.

7:15 – It is very strange to stand among people who are so above my social circle. Taking my seat among the primates, the person sitting next to me seems to be a footballer. A charming singer/guitarist entertains us quite beautifully. She dons a ukulele, stating that everyone should know ‘this song’ – I have to admit that I didn’t.

‘Enjoy the film’ she instructs, departing with her instruments still leaning against the screen. The audience is informed that the framework of the film which we are about to see went from being a 3–4 minute long YouTube video to the feature-length production which we are about to see – the product of 18 month’s work.

The introduction makes reference to the British and Victorian supremacy of 1815 to 1914, in which industrial growth and social development lead to a state in which it was possible for British citizens to have leisure time, with sport being one of the wholesome ways in which people would fill these spare moments. The audience were, in addition, informed how Wimbledon Common, an area of public ground on which such prestigious sports were developed, was formed. The valley in which it exists was formed by a glacier, and as the mass of ice and rock steadily processed it pushed gravel in front of it, a terminal moraine. This area of infertile ground formed the open area which was so disposed to the playing of sport.

Wimbledon village was for a long time a small settlement to the west of London, though its proximity meant that it became popular among the ruling, wealthy and mobile classes as a bolt hole in which they could escape the pollution of the urban area. This, in conjunction with the village’s connection to the railway, meant that it developed into a very high-powered area.

Shooting – Wimbledon was the headquarters of the National Rifle Association, the origins of which were as a scheme to train riflemen to fight the French after Napoleon had been defeated.

Running – The old and highly regarded running tradition in Wimbledon spawned as a method for rowers to keep fit in the winter when the conditions weren’t right for rowing. Roger Bannister, who scored the first four minute mile, was part of the running club which was founded for these reasons.

Rugby – A group of ex-Rugby School pupils played the game in Wimbledon, with the Rose & Crown pub as their clubhouse and changing room. This public house was also the venue for the occasion on which the club’s captain wrote the rules of Rugby.

Cricket – [My apologies, dear reader; at this point, my usually comprehensive written notes read simply '---> Cricket – 1685', for more information than that you will have to watch the film!]

Hockey – This game also originated in this area, and was developed from a melee of people with sticks and a ball into the more codified sport.

Tennis – Conversely, the land which is now Wimbledon’s famous tennis courts was originally flattened to make an area on which to play croquet. When roller which belonged to the gentlemen who played croquette’s roller broke, they organised tennis games to fund a replacement, which became the world famous tournament.

Football – The football club for the village was set up by boys who were educated in a school which provided the poor with an education. The man sitting next to me is bashful as his interview is featured in the film.

The second portion of the film expressed how sport can develop the individual very effectively, such as teaching people how to utilise teamwork and cooperation. At the same time we were reminded what sport can do for people’s health as well as their sense of honour, I see the young man from the station talking about his experience of sport. The motion picture closed with the ‘Wimbledon Song’, as rendered by a group of people with learning difficulties.

*    *     *

Claire told me that the True Volunteer Foundation — an international organisation — wanted to place a greater focus on the UK this year. To do this the organisation made the film, which it will distribute to the schools in the area, to encourage young people to take up sport and the sporting ideals as the Olympics approach. TVF was founded in Wimbledon, and the organisation intended to give something back to the area.

‘Why sport?’, I asked Claire. She replied that sport is critical to a young person’s upbringing, that it is sport which will teach children important social lessons and of course sport which will use up the plentiful energy which the young possess.

I asked Claire what made her join TVF. She replied, saying that she had been searching for a voluntary role for some time but had experienced trouble in finding one which would allow her to make a significant contribution, then found the TVF, where she has been head of marketing for two years.

*    *    *

9:20 – I’m on a bench outside a palatial building which is adjacent to the cinema, watching the stream of well-dressed people progress from the film to the after-party. The very last part of the film was, perhaps, the most effective, in that it exhibited the ideology of sport. One’s best is prime, do what you can, it is worthy.

The cool and comfortable air drifts across the town; scattered attendees make their way along the trail of balloons. I think that it is time to head inside for drinks and entertainment. What an atmosphere. Stuck in a maul at the bar, what a fantastic band. The atmosphere is very exclusive. The band starts to play ‘Stuck in the Middle with You’.

Can there be a truly egalitarian society? Or is stratification part of the nature of humanity? What is egalitarianism? Is there nothing really but good times and best tries, near-misses and recoveries.

On occasion, the cold steel of politics takes a more drab hue for me and the abstract goals of beauty and decency seep superlative – stay crazy, remain elitist. This gathering was imposing. I was a small-time fish in a pond of high-achievement and ambition. This is right, I am small. As should be the case when faced with superlative concepts like cooperation and triumph, the human teenager should feel insignificant.

The film was good, the company was good and the band was good. Therefore, when we have objectives in mind concerning the way in which we should live our lives, the more direct reply may be ‘to do a good job’.

Author’s Note: A moment of collective escapism right before the end of the world

I sit at my breakfast, pouring over the news; my paper declares that if Greece were to quit the Euro, the UK would suffer an economic contraction on the scale of the one which took place in 2008-9. Part-way down the steady slide, the grinding progress of failure, the slow motion economic train crash which our leaders nonchalantly try to avert, the people of Britain will promenade the flame of competition, the burning combustion of elitism and achievement among all the provinces, as a prelude to that great fugue the Olympics – a moment of collective escapism right before the end of the world. A solemn nod to Greece, that noble and ancient civilisation, of which a great body of our practices and ideas are the progeny, while it is holding the potential to threaten the civilisation for which it was the inspiration.

It’s all economics, and if it’s not economics it’s escapism. — This sort of statement is something I may have said with a great deal of conviction before I saw the film. I would probably say the same now, but with a very different inflection. Everything other than economics probably is escapism, but one shouldn’t disparage escapism. When we set to one side the cogs of survival; politics and economics, a cynic could call what remains escapism, this, however, could be called life — the way in which we fill the hours, sport, music, all else. In a world in which their is so much disagreement over how we should run things, the merit in having fun should be firmly stressed. In a universe with little point, the only mandate, if any, can be to have a good time, seek beauty and enjoyment.

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