A Somerset Lad

Whatever the realities of the physical universe, the Earth rotating in twenty-four hours, the orbit of the sun taking three hundred and sixty five and a quarter days, time in the way which we experience it is not linear, it does not move at an even pace over regular spaces.

Think about it. There are moments from the past which now seem to have lasted far longer than they could have done, and whole years that have passed without there being a single landmark or episode that we now remember.

Being now on the wrong side of sixty, there has come a realization that what matters are the moments that last, the moments that remain fresh, the moments that will be there when the times all around them have been forgotten.

The whole culture in which we live persuades us to postpone actual living – savings, pensions, planning, carefulness. Then there comes a moment when you realize that all the cautiousness and calculation have meant that you have missed out on life itself. Life is other people, it is relational. Far better to have no money and to have the moments brought by being with other people, the moments that cannot be bought, than to have the perfect home, garden and finances, and to have nothing to remember.

Last week, I lent someone €500, (and I would not be optimistic about seeing it again). I did so not because I am generous (I am not, I refused to tip a waitress yesterday because I thought her bad-mannered), nor did I do so because I was trying to be good (I have given up on such aspirations).  I did so because I could, because I can easily earn it back, and because I knew it would have a far greater impact in the life of the person concerned. The money would be considerably more important for the moment in which the person is living than it would be important for my bank account.

At the end of May, I am going to Marseille overnight to watch a rugby match. I don’t know who will be playing, the competition has only just reached the last sixteen. What matters is the intensity of the experience, the moment of delight at sitting down in the Stade Velodrome on an early summer’s evening and just savouring the ambience, just enjoying seeing the enjoyment and exuberance of others. The one night away will linger long after memories of long holidays have faded.

It might be a cliche to say that what matters is not the years in your life, but the life in your years, but there are undeniably times when life has such an intensity that in our memories a single day may loom larger than a whole year.

The Elbow song One day like this concludes with the lines

So throw those curtains wide.
One day like this a year would see me right.

One day to remember may be more important than three hundred and sixty-four ordinary ones.

It being the last day of term, Fifth Year students were listening to music. After a number of songs, there came the realisation that the music being played was not the music of their youth, it was the music of my youth.

As Roberta Flack’s Killing me Softly began to play, I asked the girl who had chosen it why she was playing a song from decades before she was born.

“I don’t know when it’s from, sir. It’s on Spotify and I like it.”

It made an agreeable change from the banal, monotonous rap played by some of the boys.

“Have you heard of Dionne Warwick?” I asked.

The girl typed the name into the Spotify search and found Walk on by.

“That’s nice music,” she said.

“Nice,” would have seemed to me to be an understatement of the qualities of the singer, but I was happy to accept the comment.

Standing on the terraces at a football match, the halftime music included Carly Simon’s You’re so vain.  I would probably not have noticed the song being played if it had not been for the conversation earlier in the day. The song is fifty years old, though has stood well the test of time.

It would have been unthinkable for music from the 1920s to have been played at football matches in the 1970s. (Although it might have been an improvement on what was played, I remember E viva Espana being played at Yeovil Town matches long after it had been in the charts).

Perhaps the playing of Roberta Flack by a seventeen year old student is just a reflection of how Spotify can keep decades old tunes to the fore. Once on a digital platform, it might have come from any year, recent or distant. Perhaps the sheer number of plays ensures that it comes to the attention of potential listeners and so perpetuates its popularity.

However, there seems to be an absence of a distinct youth culture. Clothing and haircuts seem more a mark of social class than of particular trends. Look at how some young people are dressed and it is not hard to guess at their background.

A colleague complains that the current youth generation are the most boring there has been. Social media have made them self-obsessed and introverted.

As pleasant as it was to hear Roberta Flack, it would have been more encouraging to have heard something distinctly 2022.

Spending the afternoon with my son helping to pack away boxes of stuff, I wondered what had become of the bow. Is it still hanging somewhere, a memento of lost times?

It was the summer of 1999 that we rented an old farmhouse in a hamlet that seemed deep in the French countryside. A triangle of towns gave us options for shopping, restaurants and markets: Sainte-Foy-la-Grande in the department of the Gironde to the north; Duras in Lot et Garonne to the south-west; and Eymet in the Dordogne to the south-east.

A meeting place for departmental boundaries, the hamlet was an odd mix of people. Our neighbour, and supplier of his own appellation controlee wine, was a true countryman of indeterminate age. Across the road, the lady was a sophisticated Parisienne. Nearby, an elderly, reclusive English couple who spoke to no-one, not even a nod as you passed.

It was a magical place for children of eight and six years old, there was a swimming pool in the garden and countryside all around. We were to return four times before demands arose for something with a little more activity for young people. Memories still linger of sitting in the late afternoon sun with a glass of kir and a pile of books.

One afternoon in August 1999, Michael and I went for a walk in the woodland that ran along the ridge of hills to the east of the hamlet.

Trees centuries old, it was the sort of place where I suspected truffles would be hunted in the autumn; not that anyone would have admitted such activity could be possible.

We decided that we were on an adventure and that bows and arrows were in order. We fashioned Michael a bow from a branch that lay on the ground and arrows from various sticks. The bowstring was a piece of black nylon twine. At the end of the holiday, the arrows remained in France, but the bow was brought back with us to Ireland.

Despite a succession of house moves, the bow stayed with us, like some legendary weapon from stories of ancient times. Its presence is a reminder that the day might come when an adventure will begin again.

I did not ask about the bow this afternoon, fearful lest it had been lost somewhere and that the magical spell might be broken.

Perhaps in decades to come, he will indulge an old man and recall with happiness those days that must now seem to him so long ago.

The bedtime drink is now a mug of milk heated in the microwave.

Once it would have been hot chocolate, then there came a realisation of how many calories there were in hot chocolate (it was in a branch of Costa where I had ordered a deluxe version that I discovered that the mug in front of me had more than seven hundred calories).

It is not that I particularly want to be slim.  At sixty-one, few people notice what you look like, and fewer still care. The attempt to avoid unnecessary fat arises from having had bouts of angina nine years ago and a cardiologist pointing to the junk accumulated in my coronary arteries.

Stepping out of the football ground this evening after a less than satisfactory 1-1 draw against lowly opposition, there was a temptation to step into one of the numerous chip shops in the vicinity. Queues of red-and-white scarfed supporters stood waiting to be served and the tempting scents wafted through the open doors.

Once a bag of chips would have rounded off any evening at a football match. Once the odours of football crowds would be superseded by the smell of fried food and vinegar.

But it wasn’t just football matches that demanded suppers.

A night out at the King William Inn in the Polden Hill village of Catcott would conclude with bread and cheese and pickled onions. Pubs went with pickles, there were country places that would have had jars of pickled eggs on the counter. (I was never quite sure if there was a polite way of eating pickled eggs).

Calling at someone’s house would often mean supper. Sometimes the frying pan would come out for sausages, bacon and egg. Sometimes there would be sandwiches. Sometimes there would be biscuits and cakes. Once I remember having baked beans on toast in a house, there seemed to be a tin of beans for each person.

Undoubtedly, there would have been a strong correlation between drinking beer and eating food, perhaps the beer made you feel more hungry.  No-one would have thought of frying eggs at midnight on any other night, but after a night out it seemed the most ordinary thing in the world.

Looking at a box of free range eggs in the fridge this evening, there was a moment of temptation. It was withstood. The bathroom scales this morning told me that I had put on ten pounds since I returned to Dublin, to be at least a stone overweight.

I took out a slice of whole grain bread and put it in the toaster thinking about the suppers I had foregone.