Today I swam in the slow lane. Next Thursday I will swim in the medium lane. Am I swimming so much faster than I was before? Not at all. Every Thursday it’s senior swim and I suspect that my fellow senior swimmers may not only be slower than me but also senior to me. Still, it gives me a bit of a thrill to think that next Thursday I will be swimming in the medium lane. I thrill quite easily these days.

But it reminded me of the time, years ago now, when I went to the doctor, my regular GP and she checked my blood pressure, just as a regular check. ‘You’re borderline,’ she told me.

‘Borderline what?’

‘You’re bordering on having high blood pressure.’

I wondered why my blood pressure had changed since it was last checked. What was I doing, eating, drinking, differently? The doctor told me that my blood pressure was unchanged since the previous reading.

‘But you didn’t tell me I was borderline then,’ I commented plaintively.

‘You weren’t,’

!!!!

‘The definition of what constitutes high blood pressure has changed. Yours hasn’t.’

When I compare myself with some of my family and friends I can see myself as borderline poor. When I compare myself with friends, some here in London but certainly some in India and Thailand, I am very rich indeed. Comparisons can be very tricky and context is very important. Poverty in the United Kingdom or New Zealand can look quite different to that in India or Africa.

C S Lewis said that pride was the greatest sin of all. The opposite virtue is humility. During the Second World War, Lewis was invited by the BBC to broadcast a series of talks. The talks became the book Mere Christianity. He devoted a whole talk to, ‘The Great Sin’, pride. Pride, he said, leads to every other vice and that is because it is basically competitive.

‘Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man’.

[An aside. Should I change Lewis’s ‘man’ to ‘person’? ‘Man’ was what he said on the BBC in 1942 and ‘man’ was what he wrote. Should I change that when I quote him in 2020?]

It’s the superior, I’m not as bad as…’ and, ‘At least I’m more generous than…’ or more polite, or kind or anything at all, wherein lies the problem. 

C S Lewis, ‘It is the comparison that makes you proud.’

When I was chaplain to my old school in Christchurch New Zealand we had School Assembly in the Hall on Thursday mornings. The whole school assembled. The Headmaster (now called ‘The Executive Principal’) led half the staff, gowned, down one aisle, up some steps, to the stage. The chaplain, cassocked, led the other half. On the stage the chaplain and the headmaster faced each other, acknowledged each other with a head bow and turned to face the school. The chaplain said, ‘Sit,’ which everyone did, and then gave a brief ‘Thought for the day.’

One Thursday I spoke about the sin of pride when it is comparative and I quoted C S Lewis. Then I sat and the Headmaster stood to give his address to the school.

He said, ‘The chaplain has spoken about the wrong sort of pride. I will speak to you about the right sort. There’s litter around the quad! And around upper! Anyone would think we were some local high school! Take some pride in the place!’

As we were processing out I heard the voice of a senior colleague behind me, ‘Chaplain,’ he said, ‘Do you think perhaps the headmaster missed your point?’

There’s a dialogue from somewhere, I’m not sure where, between a pupil and master, and it goes something like this:

‘Master, what is the secret of life?’

‘That one day we will die.’

‘But, Master, everyone knows that they will die.’

‘Yes, but not everyone lives with the knowledge that they will die.’

The knowledge of the reality of death is, I find, incredibly liberating not least because it focuses my attention on the importance of the present moment and takes my focus away from the ‘coulds’ and ‘mights’ and ‘what ifs’, and all the rest. There’s an element in living in the present moment of, ‘eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die’, which I don’t think is necessarily a bad thing, if that is ‘living life to the full’. In my case it isn’t all there is to life, though certainly eating, drinking and, if being ‘merry’ means enjoying the company of others, it is a very significant part of it.  

The dialogue may have been used by the American Professor of Sociology Morrie Schwartz. Certainly he himself said a number of death related quotable quotes including, ‘Learn how to live and you’ll know how to die; learn how to die, and you’ll know how to live’, and, ‘Death is as natural as life’.

The present atmosphere of Covid reporting seems to me to focus only on the negative, on increases in infections and worldwide infection rates rather than the numbers of those who have recovered. It seems to be, ‘the worst case scenario’, which is the most publicised case. Fear seems to be the driving force. It is as if death is a terrifying new discovery rather than part of who we are. There seems to be little recognition of the fact that death is natural.

I am determined not to be sucked into the fear syndrome which I’m sure must exist for many parents sending their children back to school. But surely risk exists everywhere and we take reasonable precautions to make life as risk free as possible. I find that when I accept not only the reality of death but live with the knowledge of it, then fear is replaced by living a life, within what is possible and permitted, to the full, now. 

So, for me, this includes the newly allowed swimming at the Castle Centre. The system works a treat and I’m really enjoying it. Swimming is so much better, I find, than walking and I’ve been trying to work out why. When I walk I think a lot, and pray a bit, and look into people’s windows and at the architecture and at which shops are open and which closed. My mind buzzes.

When I swim I only seem to think about the swimming. I’ve tried deep thoughts because, after all, I’m only going up and down the pool, but what is satisfying is simply the swimming itself. Of course I follow swimming pool etiquette so I’m aware of that. There are new signs at the end of the slow and medium lanes headed ‘Swimming Pool Etiquette’ but under the heading the print is so small I can’t read it without my glasses and I don’t wear my glasses when I swim. I wonder why those in the fast lane don’t need to be told.

And I cook. I’ve made three different types of pate starting off with the same basic mixture for all three. What was different were the spices, the herbs and the alcohol. One lot was influenced by brandy  (it had prunes and spices in it), another by whisky (apricots, herbs and chicken fillets) and the third by gin (crushed juniper berries). I gave some to my neighbours to do a taste test and had another taste test with some of the family on Sunday. The brandy one was described as Christmassy, pudding or cake. The whisky one came out as the favourite and I was the only one who favoured gin and juniper berries. But the thing about cooking is that you really do have to stay focussed and, if you enjoy cooking, which I do, you certainly live every moment to the full. Even the dropping stuff on the floor moments.

Maybe this sounds very trivial in the light of the very serious things that are happening in the world and perhaps it is. But I do think the only things we can deal with are the things we can deal with. Right now that is living a life and living it to the full.

The most important thing in my life is other people and under Lockdown my contact with other people is restricted but I do see some people and it is possible to live those moments to the full as well. Not, I find, by making those times very intense or particularly deep or significant but just, insomuch as it is possible, by making those times positive and perhaps even enjoyable.

Last week I went to dinner at a restaurant with three friends. It was my first dinner at a restaurant for more than six months. I went by bus, wearing a mask of course, and there were such traffic jams that the bus had to ‘terminate’ half way there. I walked in the rain for a bit and then telephoned one of my friends who took me the last stage in her car. The evening was bliss. We enjoyed the food and wine and each other’s company. We ate, drank and were merry.

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.