Tuesday

Before Lockdown I swam at least three days a week, minimum distance 500 meters, in my local pool at Elephant and Castle. It was a good discipline. Good for my health, physical and mental. It’s been tough sometimes without the swimming. Walking is ok but it’s not the same. Now the pool and the gym are open again. You must book an appointment and numbers are limited.

I downloaded the Everyone Active App, with help. And I discovered that App is short for ‘application’ which didn’t get me anywhere in particular.  On my own I managed, eventually, to book an appointment for a  swim, 55 minutes from 10.30am on Wednesday. The guidelines were a little worrying as they suggested I should arrive ‘changed and ready to play’. That couldn’t apply to swimming, I thought. Walking down Kennington Park Road in my swimming trunks (togs, in New Zealand) would not be a pretty sight in anyone’s book. I tried to click on the link for specific measures for swimming but it wasn’t interested in connecting me. I telephoned and the system put me through to a very helpful person who explained that as I would only have five minutes to change in a ‘group’ area on arrival it would be worth wearing my trunks under my clothes. After my swim I could go into the male changing room to shower and get dressed as before. 

Wednesday

At 10.10am I set off, fully dressed but with my swimming trunks underneath, and arrived at The Castle, my local Leisure Centre, at 10.20. Leisure Centre is a strange description of the place, it seems to me. There’s nothing leisurely about swimming up and down even in the slow lane. It’s hard work. And as for the gym it’s even harder. 

But be that as it may. There was a queue, very orderly and socially distanced, towards the gate. At 10.25 we were off. The arrival was odd. Most of the people in the queue had gone to the gym. I didn’t understand where the group changing area for the swimming pool was, it was in a part of the building I’d never been to before. I did get lost and had to retrace my steps but eventually I found a bench and sat and undressed there. A fellow swimmer, a woman, had found a cubicle to change in and we chatted about how strange it all was and how good it was to be back.

With my clothes in my bag I then followed the arrows around the pool to a floor area marked out for slow lane bags. I negotiated the signs and the system and got into the pool. I paused, crouching in the shallow end, water up to my neck. Suddenly the relief, everything was normal.

A friend told me of the joy and excitement on the face of her young grandson when he came back from his first day at school since Lockdown began. She asked him what it was that was wonderful. Was it meeting up with his friends again? Was it seeing his teachers?

‘No, Nanna! It was just normal.’

I have neither written nor painted for a fortnight. I’ve not been in the mood.  And it’s not as if there’s lots to do in these days of continuing lockdown. And writing and painting is what I do, amongst other things like tidying and cooking and walking and going to church. As a friend told me, ‘Even if you’re not in the mood just decide to write for five minutes.’ Which I didn’t need to be told because I knew it already. But I did need the reminder. I am too often surprised by what I know perfectly well is a good thing to do but have forgotten when I most need to remember.

Being led by one’s mood seems to me a bit like waiting for inspiration. It doesn’t really get me anywhere. Austen Deans, the New Zealand painter and our neighbour for all of my growing up years, said to me once, ‘Simon, if Michelangelo had been commissioned to paint a car bumper bar he would have painted it! He didn’t wait around for inspiration. He got on with the job!’ Austen was committed to the idea of artist as craftsman and he had that discipline of going out every morning, weather permitting, and sometimes when it didn’t, and painting.

There’s a watercolour somewhere that my father bought simply because when he was out on the farm very early one morning, mustering, and it was freezing cold, he came across Austen, painting. The watercolour had frozen on the paper and had left the wonderful pattern of frost in the blue of the sky.

So I’m writing. The five minutes have extended naturally. It’s an Update and, maybe, I will paint later. It isn’t as if I’ve been doing nothing this past fortnight. I have. I’ve been planning for my old age. And there are at least two things that are odd about that. 

The first is that I’ve never planned for the future before. Of course I’ve planned my travel to and from New Zealand and I have an appointments diary and I plan my meals, mostly. But not my ‘future’. It has just happened as it’s come along and much of it has been a surprise. And, as when travelling, the best bits have often been the unplanned and unexpected bits. 

The second thing is that planning requires a degree of certainty and I think that I’ve never lived before in less certain times. Planning needs fixed hooks to hang things on and there seem to be very few fixed hooks around at the moment.

But there are some, so there are things like Powers Of Attorney for business and for health to be put in place. A Will and Wishes to be updated. But as to planning for every eventuality or even every possible or probable eventuality, it is very difficult to do.

However this planning does encourage me to focus on trying to see the purpose of my old age. I suspect that as the first third of my life was focussed on physical and mental development, the middle years on consolidation, this latter time may be for spiritual growth. That’s just a thought. It’s not obvious and it’s a work in progress. 

It is wonderful for me and for others who gym and swim or either, that gyms and swimming pools are open again. I contacted my local swimming pool to discover whether or not I could just turn up at my usual time either for ‘Silver Swim’, free for those over sixty year olds who live in the Borough of Southwark, or ‘lane swimming’, 70 pence from midday to 2.00pm. I manage lane swimming perfectly well – in the slow lane.

‘No. You cannot just turn up you must make an appointment.’

‘Fine. Could I please make an appointment.’

‘No. You need to download the app.’

‘Ah!’

I have an iPad and an iPhone and a laptop. I even have a website. But when it comes to managing these useful pieces of equipment beyond telephoning, messaging, emailing and googling, then I get a bit lost. A young friend has come to do some heavy work in the garden. He’s shown me how to download the app. I’ve done it. Can I negotiate the app? Not a hope. And nor could he!

In 1955 the major production of the Christ’s College Dramatic Society was George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. I was in that production. I was in Act Three and Act Five. I played the Parlour-maid. I had four lines in Act Three, announcing each arrival to the ‘At Home’ being given by Mrs Higgins, and I was required to bring in a tea tray. In the second of three  performances I forgot to bring in the tea tray. Yvette Bromley, ‘Madam’, our Drama teacher was, rightly, furious. But none of that is particularly relevant except for the fact that I remember much of the dialogue from Act Three of Pygmalion.

Act Three is set in the drawing room of Professor Higgin’s mother’s Chelsea flat. In the musical adaptation , My Fair Lady, it is moved to Royal Ascot, and that’s not relevant either. Mrs Higgins is ‘At Home’. Her son calls in, to Mrs Higgins irritation. The Professor is unguarded in his comments and puts off His mother’s friends. Mrs Eynsford Hill calls with her daughter and son and, later, Colonel Pickering and, of course, Miss Eliza Dolittle. But what follows is before Eliza arrives.

MISS EYNSFORD HILL [who considers Higgins quite eligible matrimonially] I sympathize. I haven’t any small talk. If people would only be frank and say what they really think!

HIGGINS [relapsing into gloom] Lord forbid!

MRS. EYNSFORD HILL [taking up her daughter’s cue] But why?

HIGGINS. What they think they ought to think is bad enough, Lord knows; but what they really think would break up the whole show. Do you suppose it would be really agreeable if I were to come out now with what I really think?

MISS EYNSFORD HILL [gaily] Is it so very cynical?

HIGGINS. Cynical! Who the dickens said it was cynical? I mean it wouldn’t be decent.

MRS. EYNSFORD HILL [seriously] Oh! I’m sure you don’t mean that, Mr. Higgins.

HIGGINS. You see, we’re all savages, more or less. We’re supposed to be civilized and cultured—to know all about poetry and philosophy and art and science, and so on; but how many of us know even the meanings of these names? [To Miss Hill] What do you know of poetry? [To Mrs. Hill] What do you know of science? [Indicating Freddy] What does he know of art or science or anything else? What the devil do you imagine I know of philosophy?

MRS. HIGGINS [warningly] Or of manners, Henry?

As Vicar of St Luke’s in Christchurch in the late 1970s I would organise seminars and invite interesting speakers. I asked a colleague, Fr Reynolds, to be the guest speaker at a seminar. 

‘Oh no,’ he said, ‘You don’t want me.’

‘Yes, I do, I’ve asked you!’

To which Fr Reynolds replied, kindly, and accurately.

‘No, Simon, you will tell them to let it all hang out. And I will tell them to tuck it all back in again.’

He did speak at that seminar and I did as he said and he did as he said. I’ve become less convinced about the value of ‘letting it all hang out’, over the years. There can be something self-indulgent about telling people what one really thinks, about always telling the truth.

A friend  told me a Yorkshire saying, ‘Mind you always tell the truth. But mind you don’t always tell it.’

Chapter 7 of Book 4 in C S Lewis’s Mere Christianity is entitled ‘Let’s Pretend’. I’ve found my old copy and, rather to my surprise because I’m not in the habit of writing in books, even paperbacks which this is, I have written under the Chapter Heading ‘Lies!??’  

In this chapter Lewis is writing about becoming ‘good’, ‘like God’, and he suggests there is bad pretending ‘where the pretence is there rather than the real thing; as when a man pretends he is going to help you instead of really helping you.’ And that there’s a good kind of pretence, ‘where the pretence leads up to the real thing. When you are not feeling particularly friendly but know you ought to be, the best thing you can do, very often, is to put on a friendly manner and behave as if you are a nicer person than you actually are. And in a few minutes, as we have all noticed, you will be really feeling friendlier that you were.’

 I suppose, to get back to Henry Higgins, it’s at the very least about good manners – good manners not simply for their own sake but good manners to allow positive communication to happen and relationships to grow.

Thailand is known as, ‘The Land of Smiles’. The tourist industry uses it as a catch phrase to indicate what a friendly country Thailand is – and it is. But there’s more to the Thai smile than friendliness. In Thailand people smile not just because they’re happy, it’s part of a deep inbuilt philosophy. If, in the west, we are confronted by a stranger who stares at us or who seems threatening, our inbuilt reaction is to clench our fists, tighten our muscles, breath more quickly and prepare to fight, or, in my case, run. The psychologists tell us our reaction is likely to be, freeze, fight, or flee. If we say anything it is likely to be, ‘What’s your problem then,’ or ‘Who do you think you’re staring at?’ Under similar circumstances a Thai will smile. The first defensive act is to allow for a positive outcome. We could say the smile is not genuine, not honest, not true. And we could be right. But it may also be a very wise way forward to positive action and even to friendship.

I can hear Ray Hunt, my English teacher in the fifth form, saying, ‘Check your spelling, boy! Check your spelling!’ If I was very clever I’m sure I could find a reason for giving the title Dissolution to something about Disillusion but I can’t. It was a mistake. Though, come to think of it, in this day of always being able to find something or someone to blame, it could have been the fault of ‘spellcheck’ or one of those things my computer does all on its own with no reference to me at all,

DISILLUSION

Disillusioned is such an odd word. Are we ever illusioned? It rather suggests that we could have seen that it was an illusion in the first place. Disillusion with the government, the church, friends – were my expectations unrealistic in the first place or is the illusion what drives us forward?

There’s a good deal of disillusionment around at the moment, both with leaders of the Church and in politics let alone business, the media and the police. Some of it I share. And, of course, what I’ve had to face up to is that part of this is because of my unrealistic ‘illusion’ in the first place. The amount of ‘good’ and ‘strong’ and ‘true’ – add as many positive adjectives as you like – leadership, that I can expect, must always be tempered by reasonable expectation based on facts and a realistic recognition of human fallibility. Nobody is perfect and we human beings are not in control of everything. The pandemic surely teaches us that.

When leaders don’t tell the truth or don’t fulfil promises of course I feel let down and am very disappointed and disillusioned. And that doesn’t only apply to leaders it also applies to roofers as I consider quotes for repairing my roof, and to builders who as part of their brief agree to clear up after they’ve finished the job. 

However I am bothered at the degree of unrealistic expectation, that I think we have, of what is achievable by those who lead us.  Could we really do that much better? I suspect it’s the old business of idolatry. There are few now, I suspect, who make idols of gold and silver and wood and stone in order to worship them. And if they do those idols are quickly pulled down.

The sermons I heard when I was young, the sermons about idolatry that is, directed my attention to idolising material things. Smart cars seemed to feature a lot. I think that was because in the New Zealand of that time many men spent Saturday mornings lovingly mending, washing and caring for their cars. Their cars were their idols. Or perhaps it was just that the preacher was envious because he didn’t have a very smart car.

But the really dangerous idolatry is surely that of making idols of other people. They invariably disappoint in the end because they are just that – other people. It can happen within marriage or with close friends. If we put someone on a pedestal we must take some responsibility for when they fall. People don’t belong on pedestals they belong alongside. 

More and more we seem to expect our political and religious leaders to be without fault. Or rather there are some faults, and they change with the fashion and the times, that they should be without. And we become disillusioned and let down when we discover that they have similar weaknesses to our own. 

Through all this I admire anyone who is prepared to go into public life at any level in order to serve their local community or their country. Sometimes we seem to take more delight in being ‘disillusioned’ than in taking responsibility for our part in the illusion.

It is sad when a friend dies, even more so a very dear one. But this sadness is not without hope.  Now I’m not talking about an ‘I’ll see you again’, sort of hope, which has always seemed to me very earthbound, as in, ‘See you later’, or ‘See you in Sloane Square’, or Kennington Park or wherever. That would have raised a smile from Bill Scott and I certainly find it amusing – that word again – to say the least.  

The sort of hope that Bill and I share is in a life that includes the Divine,  the Other, or as another good friend put it, ‘that is shot through with Eternity’. This hope is founded on our belief in a life that is more than a material or mechanical or earthbound existence. 

Of course my belief is impossible to prove in exactly the same way that a belief in life totally bound by conception and death is also impossible to prove. However I find myself set free in an extraordinary way by the awareness that to every thought, every discovery, every encounter, there is the possibility of more and that nothing is the final answer. Faith is the foundation of my hope and one aspect of this hope is that it involves patience and does not demand or expect either immediate answers or immediate solutions.

This is not an excuse for avoiding responsibility for the sustainability of the planet or the struggle for justice, but rather the opposite. It is a call to responsibility in the context of hope and not of despair and in the context of love and not of fear. It is dynamic and not static and, I guess, evolutionary not revolutionary.

If all this sounds too much like a sermon – tough. Bill Scott was someone who could say all these sorts of things without it sounding like a sermon not least because his priesthood was totally and completely him and it didn’t come on and off with his clerical collar. And that is at least part of why I will miss him.

PS More on Words

Some words change in meaning for no apparent reason. Such changes explain the fact that Sir Christopher Wren, the architect of St. Paul’s Cathedral, was pleased and not offended when it was called, “amusing, awful, and artificial.” In those days amusing meant amazing, awful meant awe-inspiring, and artificial meant artistic. Surely we must therefore do some careful research before we presume to know, and take offence at, the meaning of words expressed in an historical context. The meaning may have changed from something that was fine then to something quite different and unacceptable in our time.