My sister-in-law says she's "a bit behind with Christmas".
She said that three weeks ago as well.
Nng.
The foxes are up early, croaking out an eerie dawn chorus and catching me with a head full of George.
I haven't read the obits or the retrospectives but by chance I did sit through a video history of British Football yesterday with Jake, and all of George Best's six goals against Northampton Town were included. Marvellous stuff. Haven't seen them for years. And I felt sad, but confused too. Was his talent wasted? No, we have the clips. Plenty of people paid to watch him and went home very satisfied. He had medals and trophies at the highest level. Did he die young? Yes. Did he do it to himself? Well, yes - and maybe no. Choose your villain.
Of course it was the drink that killed him, the same 'nasty bottle' that killed Bonnie Prince Charlie. But why did he drink? We can medicalise and geneticise all our badness if we want to these days. Diseased or degenerate, helpless or hopeless, my call your call. Jimmy Greaves pulled himself out of that swamp. Did George even try - really try? A liver transplant must have been a bit of a wake-up call. My aunt had one although she wasn't a drinker, and if George was in anything like the state she was in before he got his, then I'm surprised he lasted as long as he did. My aunt degenerated from being a bonny, pink cheeked sixty into a little brown old lady in a year or so. Her flesh melted away as she lost the ability to manage her own blood, till her spine felt like a grim toast rack the last time I hugged her. I don't imagine George would have fared much better, but he drank on.
In an interview I once read with him - the last that I can recall - he insisted that he didn’t retire early and that if he had played for Brazil as opposed to Northern Ireland he would have been hailed as the greatest footballer of all time. Maybe he was right. Or maybe he was just as prone to self deception as the rest of us. But modest he wasn’t. You couldn’t play like that with a sense of modesty anywhere inside you, could you?
Whatever. He had talent, and talent is a worrying, troubling thing to those who possess it above a certain degree, and to some of us who can only look on.
It was Colin Wilson who posited a human ‘Faculty X’, untapped potential, a k a ‘The X Factor’. I don’t know if he would approve of the way the phrase is now used, or quite what he would make of the 'horribly fabulous' Chico and his progress to next week's Final. I never took the X idea seriously after reading a skillful demolition of the concept many years ago along the lines of ‘It’s pretentious and self-serving to give a new name to something that already exists as a way of a) pretending you discovered it and b) that it has some spooky life of its own which lends some sonorous depth to your own claims to be a deep thinker.’
Nevertheless Talent with a big T needs to be approached with caution.
The Right wing use it as a proof that human excellence springs up from all sides, that poverty is escapable, that some are born superior, that Instinct is a Good Thing. This runs neatly alongside the Great Man theory of history, the idea that our lives are shaped by certain individuals especially blessed in the skills of thinking and doing, skills that the rest of us better not be let near. Talent proves that notions of equality are perverse and social projects that fail to recognise its existence are both doomed to failure and morally wrong. Talent nurtured is talent stunted. To deny innate ability is to flatten out and twist our social arrangements, to tie our hands and blinker our imaginations.
So who denies talent? Anyone who thinks that it is an arbitrary division between otherwise similar individuals. Marxists, for instance, who will see it as a conversion of privilege into cash or an unwarranted bourgeois overvaluing of one man over another which picks at the solidarity of the proletariat. The whole New Age movement has issues with talent too. If talent is random, undesevedly given to the few, then what of self improvement? If our natures are fixed then do we only get one shot at life? What is the purpose of all this choice around us if not to offer us possibilities? We can all find talent within and unlock it, they say. They would, wouldn't they. If every How To... manual started with a disclaimer at the front saying ‘Even if you follow all the instructions in this book you’ll probably still be useless’ then sales won’t be topping single figures too often. As public education has discovered, both teachers and pupils want to believe in improvement and strain to see it. And if potential is all a done deal then how cruel for those who really, really want to be good at something but can’t, and can see others who didn’t send away for the course apparently maddened by the gift. Cobain, Cook and Gascoigne seem shallow and ungrateful.
Well, if talent doesn’t exist then George Best certainly managed to get an unusual degree of cooperation from opponents making themselves look foolish by sitting down in the mud at crucial moments. I can see that, but it doesn’t mean I would have voted for Mussolini.
So why is rare talent so toxic to some of its possessors? How could Picasso or Dickens or Stevie Wonder stay sane? Over the years I’ve been close enough to big talent to form a view, to arrange some crumbs from the table into pretty shapes. I’ve also for the most part been as distant as everyone else, distant enough not to need to follow its illusions.
Talent is self motivating in that most people like to do what they are good at; it’s isolation that kills. Being one of a kind is daunting. Who understands? If you stay close to your roots, or in a small stable circle then you can be accepted and behave relatively naturally. But if your territory has no borders, if you live in a world of strangers then not only might you think that no one understands you, you may suspect, rightly, that most of these people are using you for their own purposes. I remember Best saying to Michael Parkinson that the girls used to say, as they were getting out of their clothes, “I hope you don’t think I’m doing this just because you’re George Best”. We all laughed, but as I got older I began to see the downside of living a life where your fame did more work than you did. Kings used to enjoy hunting as a test of wills because men and women could not but obey them. Best had the pitch to provide that challenge, a place where he could lay aside his royalty. Once it was gone his world was far too tractable. He loved his status but he got his own way too often, and hated it when he didn’t. Fame is the high contact form of isolation.
The sense that you are liked, loved, rewarded for something you do well is uplifting, ennobling, but if it comes to define you then you are what you do, and if you aren’t doing it then you are less than yourself. So you go on doing it and if you, or your admirers, suspect that you aren’t at your best then a spiral of doubt begins. If you stop doing it, you are what you were. Writers and artists can go on for ever, singers have to stop sometime - in some instances the earlier the better - but sportsmen find stopping hardest of all, and it comes early. There are only so many vacancies in television presenting, only so many columns to be written. Meanwhile there are plenty of unopened bottles of wine in the world and a queue of keen fame-sharers round every beer pump.
Talent is nearer to instinct than reflection. Talent at physical expression, which needs speed of execution, is the least reflective of all, and the first to depart with advancing age. People say that David Gower was so blessed with balance, coordination and eyesight that he never had to learn to play in the way that a Boycott did. When the reflexes slowed he had no method to compensate, he just played and missed thinking “Why isn’t the ball over there now? It always used to be.” Reflection needs a bit of practice too, and I don’t imagine George felt need or desire to put in the hours any more than he used to enjoy morning training sessions. Leisure makes no sense without work. Genius in the moment is not really work. Dissipation is not really leisure.
Lastly, talent brings responsibility - all round. Not to be confued with pressure, which is just another way of looking at a thrill. Young men, big money, ninety minutes work a week. What’s to stay in for? Except to guard and nurture your talent. But if you never asked for it, if it’s always been there when required then it’s part of you and what’s good for you can’t harm it, and fun is good for you. The potential damage to mental and physical health hidden away in this rationale is now obvious to nearly everyone concerned, at least where physical fitness and big money overlap. At Manchester United they learned their lesson with Best. Ryan Giggs, who was the first of the new George Bests to appear at Old Trafford, was carefully guarded. Now that business brains run football clubs the bingeing gets noticed. It also gets reported and is no longer considered neutral to good. Wayne Rooney is the new George Best, but without the charm or the looks. Watch that space, fingers crossed.
It was unsought responsibility that killed George VI too, in the view of Winston Churchill who knew a thing or two about pressure. That George, who was really Albert, would never have had to be King if his brother Edward, who was really David, hadn’t decided to duck the major responsibility he had been trained for from birth, and run off with a girl after a misspent youth of money and fame. No Belfast beginnings in that family but the drink got to Bertie as surely as it got to Bestie. Or Hurricane Higgins.
It’s the old, old catch. I am all of me. If I were different I wouldn’t be me. What made me great will also kill me, but that’s the price of the ride. If my talent puts me in a new place which I can’t have foreseen, I can’t be expected to equip myself to deal with it in advance. Start poor, get rich, live on instinct, outlast your reason for being. I haven’t had to do that. Most of the people who do are traumatised by it. Elvis, Maradona, Thatcher.
I’m not going to judge him. I’ll just marvel at Best’s prodigious ability to reduce the vertical to the horizontal; opposing defenders, beautiful women and ultimately himself.
Back to bed now, I think.
They depend upon no minister of the Maesius for their l'ecluse, nor peevish they lis'en the priesthood, as others profess, as a distinct apsis of field-glasses.
What a marvellous comment to find in my box. From Donald Rumsfeld personally, I dare say. The bit urging me to buy Tamiflu wasn’t nearly as good, and as I figure DR has made enough money out of this bird flu nonsense already I won’t be ordering.
Went out last night and spent a delightful evening in Clapham with a friend, chewing the fat and having a curry - sometimes both at once. The menu was long and complicated and among a range of unfamiliar dishes one caught my eye. "Look," I said, "they do something called 'Chicken Sholay' here". We laughed and I suggested it might have been more appropriate if the restaurant had been in Wimbledon. Anyway, we agreed that if the Wombles were cooking for these guys we just had to try it. But it didn’t sound very interesting when we asked the waiter what was in it, and he told us the chef’s first name was Ali, not Madame. So we went down more conventional routes, me for a jal ferezi, and we were not disappointed.
We discussed many important things, not least the question: if Madonna had never existed would it be necessary to invent her? We firmly agreed that it would not. Mind you, after several Young's Specials and two large glasses of Cobra we would probably have given Judge Jeffreys a run for his money.
I went home on one of those big red mobile phone booths fomerly known as buses. They differ from the old style red boxes in that they're larger and they don’t smell of wee. They both wobble about a lot after a night on the beer, though.
Had a lot to think about today. None of it personal.
All the same a couple of questions struck me:
In wooden spoon competitions, is the loser awarded the Italian Rugby team?
Are the residents of Godalming called Godalmingers?
One week on from Zoe's birthday party the glitter glue all over the tablecloth still lights up our evening meals in a multicoloured riot. Outside, someone has dug up the entire street. And no one stopped them. So much for the Neighbourhood Watch. They've stolen about three tons of tarmac and earth. More worryingly there was Police incident tape around our local cornershop last night. And I'm just off out to get a pint of milk.
We didn't go for a walk in the woods after all; we went to Dulwich Park instead, which was not the scenic leafy autumn panorama that the woods would have been. It was altogether an earthier experience. Rumour has it that a lottery grant has been awarded to the place. I think it must have been given to a conceptual artist who is building a model of the Western Front c 1916. The lake was drained, the grass scraped off, mounds of mud stood about patiently between bits of wire fencing. Cross country tennis could have been attempted on the once flat courts but no takers were on view. Perhaps there'll be a kickabout at Christmas. We'll see.
We cut our losses and went straight to have lunch, selecting the E*st D*lwich Br*sserie. Mistake no 2.
It's a very English thing, not complaining. I'm sure if I had been on the Titanic and a steward from the White Star Line had rowed alongside our lifeboat and asked "How’s everything for you, then?" I would have replied "Fine, thanks" and left it at that. Mel would have undoubtedly muttered something about sending a stiff letter to someone, a letter that would have hit a snag somewhere in the planning stages and never darkened a letter box, let alone anyone's desk.
So, this meal then. I got off to a bad start when I couldn't figure out how to open the street door to the restaurant. I assume all doors in public places open outwards, for fire safety reasons. This one didn't and had a metal handle so close to the door jamb that it was not possible to hold the handle and push inwards without severely skinning your knuckles. You don't need a handle if all you have to do is push. Tip: if you are going to provide a handle that has no purpose then don't make it a health hazard. First impressions are lasting impressions and the one on my hand lasted most of the meal.
A less hungry man would have read the omens at this point and gone to the nearest greasy spoon, but what with anniversaries and all that I felt plastic bucket seats and Heart FM weren't quite the thing. So in we went.
We sat down. An appetising pause in the proceedings was then thoughtfully provided. We discussed the menu and we both chose burgers, then continued to enjoy the serene privacy that seemed to be the establishment's style. We ordered, but burgers, it transpired, were off, so we fell back on our reserve choices, our crests teetering though not yet fully fallen. Another long wait followed during which a man in white trousers walked out of the restaurant only to reappear carrying a plastic bag marked ‘Somerfield’.
“How are your nachos,” I asked appropriately, some time later.
“The salsa and the guacamole are from Somerfield,” replied Mel, also appropriately. I should point out at this juncture that our local filling station is a Somerfield mini-mart so we are well acquainted with many of their own brand products.
Another appetising delay ensued.
“What’s your Creole coleslaw like?” asked Mel after the staff had finally caught and cooked my steak.
"I'm not sure what's Creole about it but it’s exactly like the stuff you can get from Somerfield," I replied flatly, while inwardly marvelling at the way the chef had rigorously copied the familiar industrial mayonnaise flavour. At this moment I caught sight of the man in white trousers again and watched him as he skillfully negotiated the carnivorous door and hurried out into the street. Perhaps he’s getting out while he’s ahead, I thought to myself, but I was wrong, for he reappeared about five minutes later carrying a bag marked ‘Iceland’. “That’ll be the desserts,” observed Mel, but we’ll never know because the inner gourmand inside both of us had died at the sight.
So I asked for the bill, but with a degree of reluctance. Firstly it was bound to be more than I would have paid for the same food in Somerfield, and secondly because I wasn’t prepared to wait while the staff went out in search of a branch of Paperchase to get a pen and a notebook. But they came up trumps this time. As a restaurant they had had the foresight to stock up with office supplies. It seems it was only food that they lacked.
"And how was your meal? Everything all right for you, then?" asked our waiter.
"Fine, thanks," I said with a smile. And left it at that.
It’s our wedding anniversary today. It’s fine and dry so we’ll be out for a walk in Dulwich Woods some time later.
For me this time of year is a bit like a bad luck streak going round the fourth side of the Monopoly board, with three birthdays to fund in Sept/Oct and an anniversary in Nov. This is roughly equivalent to landing on a green then a blue. At this low point I'm then smacked in the wallet by Christmas which doesn't involve collecting £200 but is more like landing directly on Chance where I get caught for £400 by a card saying:
Identity theft not in your favour - pay £200 to a wine bar you've never heard of.
Plus your children read the Guardian Weekend Gadget Supplement and you get stung for two iDogs, two plasma screen mobiles, and a toaster that plays DVDs. Pay another £200 - and feel lucky to get away so lightly.
Zoe’s birthday party was on Saturday, only a month after her birthday. Best not to rush into these things. A report will follow once the champagne wears off.
So much to say, so little of it interesting.
Shall I tell blood curdling tales of Hallowe'en? Of the sweets we bought in fear of the local marauding sugar fiends? Of the hours we sat, shivering in the darkness fearful lest a passing child should guess we might actually be in? Well it was either that or get them to fill in a Means Test form. See, I did my research and I found out that all this Trick or Treat nonsense is actually English but it’s come back to us from America in a strange and mutant form, in the same way that Morris dancing turned into hip hop. So it’s as English as our Royals, and as American as Arnold Schwarzenegger. The point used to be to give alms to poor people on Hallowe'en and if you didn't then bad luck would come to you. That's old fashioned charity for ya - all about fear.
Or shall I tell of how we were watching fireworks when the mobile DJ suddenly whipped off Coldplay to spin ‘Smoke On The Water’. My gob was smacked but someone told me they had heard it was by request. And that's middle aged parents for ya. Talk about jumping to conclusions. Smoke there was, certainly. But water? Smoke On the Cricket Pitch, I think you'll find, I thought. But there again once the smoke was out there we could easily have been looking at the Lake Geneva shoreline and not at a hot dog stand in front of a pavilion. Anything by Jamiroquai would have done just as well, I further thought as the clouds engulfed us.
Our toaster, Flaming Mary II, was replaced in a palace coup by Flaming Mary III a couple of weeks ago. Old Mary had become increasingly erratic and capricious and it was finally decided that she had to go when the handle at the front sheared off, turning her at a stroke from a toaster into a slot machine whose only conceivable purpose would be to burn any spare ten pound notes we might find lying about.
FM III is a chip off the old block and works very well. She is definitely more intelligent than any other domestic aid in the house. She has a lovely orange homeyglowing backlit display with a picture of a piece of toast in the middle, which has a large number written on it, adjustable from 1 to 6. That works pretty well and doesn’t seem to suffer from the old ‘first thing in the morning cold wires I thought you’d got the hang of this by now’ problem that so seriously affected our old style toaster. You know the sort of thing. First attempt: in white soft - out white hard. Second attempt: in white hard - out black hard. She is also more culturally tolerant than her historical namesake and has extra settings for crumpets and even bagels. The problem is the crumpet setting. 2 is too little and 3 is too much. On the old analogue toaster settings you could move the little lever just a gnat’s to the right and get a small difference (in theory). So I and the children had a little chat about the benefits of infinite over quantised gradations. Or rather I had a little chat about infinite spectrum gradations while yet another crumpet got burned.
I ate that one, washed down with a squirt of not very runny honey squeezed at pains from a severely misshapen bottle - the result of an attempt to free up the flow by putting it in the microwave a few months back. That does seem to be a bit of a theme emerging round here, it suddenly strikes me. Lack of subtlety in domestic appliances. Stalin probably had the same problem, getting people to do just enough and no more. Our appliances seem much too eager to please.
Jake had a terrific Parents’ Evening review from his pretty young teacher last night.
I enjoyed that.