IMPOSSIBLE DREAMS

As you progress upwards through the 7 Ages of Man, you soon realise that there are a number of ambitions you are not going to realise. In part this is because your talents, such as they were, lay elsewhere and partly because you were too damned idle to do anything about it when you had the chance and the physical capacity. In any event it is in an elegiac frame of mind rather than a self-reproachful one that I parade some of my now impossible dreams.

1.      Athletics. Nature was a little unkind to me as I was always chunky rather than lithe, plodding rather than graciously rapid. So I had to admire others from afar. As a lad, I fantasized about scoring that winning try for Scotland against the Australians just as Wee Jaikie Galt scored his in Buchan’s 1930 novel Castle Gay. Wee Jaikie had been a member of The Gorbals Diehards street-gang but had contrived to get to Cambridge and earn his rugby Blue. On the wing, Jaikie baffled the Aussie defence with his side-step and his ferret-like ability to evade and squirm out of tackles sealing his triumph at the final whistle. Well, Scotland can still beat the Australians (24-19 in Sydney as recently as 17 June) but the All Blacks are still an unscaled peak. But be patient!

The most exciting rugby player I ever saw was Richard Sharp, fly-half for England when still up at Oxford, who cut through defences like butter. His Championship winning try at Twickenham in 1963 against, alas, Scotland was the epitome of elegance and skill.

Richard Sharp touches down in 1963

2.       Hill Walking. I was brought up in glorious Scotland and walking in The Pentlands, The Grampians and dozens of other places was open to me. I did walk up Byron’s “Dark Lochnagar” at least twice but that was about the zenith of my achievement apart from the undemanding heights of Bennachie (“whar the Gadie rins”), a nostalgic spot for all natives of Aberdeenshire. But I can say nothing of scaling Munros and other such commonplace feats. I missed many a trick there but I was living in London- or that’s my excuse anyhow. Now in Folkestone, I would doubtless enjoy a brisk walk over the Weald but my dream hill-walking is further afield in the magical Dolomites which I only know slightly – those craggy mountains overlooking enchanted alpine meadows are my idea of heaven.

The Dolomites - a dream of heaven

                                           

3.      Singing. I love singing and as a prep-school boy I sang solos, being particularly appreciated when my voice darkened to become an alto. When my voice broke I inexplicably turned my back on singing and never took up a bass part in my school choir. This was another of life’s errors, but then 14-year-olds are not easily managed. So I have to content myself with arias in my bath and hymn singing in my car, well away from sensitive ears.

But how much I envy those choir members contributing so much to the great classic oratorios, masses and cantatas. A day or two ago I listened on YouTube to a performance of Bach’s Mass in B Minor (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7F7TVM8m95Y). What a magnificent piece, how devotionally intense, yet how joyful and how replete with flowing harmony! It must be an enormous privilege to be a member of a choir capable of performing such works. I am more familiar with Handel’s stupendous Messiah (were I a trained bass how much I would love to sing The Trumpet shall Sound) but the choir has rousing choruses galore culminating in glorious Worthy is the Lamb and the incomparable Amen. Singing in these works means partaking in some of the finest achievements of Western Civilisation.

4.      Writing. I try my hand at writing and I enjoy this modest labour. Sometimes I am pleased with my results but I am untrained and I occasionally muse that had I kept with my first ambition to be a journalist I may have been more satisfied (though poorer!) than with my eventual incarnation as a rather pedestrian private equity investor. Yet I am far too diffident to be an effective journalist and an isolated writer in his ivory tower is a lonely existence, so maybe my quiet return to writing in my later years was the sensible route for me.

For I know good writing and good writers when I see them. John Steinbeck surpassed himself with The Grapes of Wrath just as Thomas Wolfe had done with Look Homeward, Angel. Evelyn Waugh was never better than in Brideshead Revisited. Critics like Christopher Hitchins and Tom Wolfe could write like angels and versatile Alan Bennett enchants his British public with his dry humanity. I present the palm for the greatest writer of fiction to our hardy perennial Charles Dickens, whose work is admittedly uneven but whose bustling style and eye for character has brought us Mr Pickwick and hilarious Sam Weller, Betsy Trotwood, Little Nell, Mr Squeers, Fagin and Bill Sikes, Mrs Gamp, but most of all Mr Wilkins Micawber, nobly “waiting for something to turn up”. Here was real genius and truly perceptive writing – far beyond my feeble grasp.

The great Charles Dickens

5.      The Brotherhood of Man. Yes, this is a utopian vision and our present world does not encourage us much. Divisions, conflicts, hatreds and animosity run rampant. However I am reading Yuval Noah Harari’s Homo Deus and he informs me that Man is merely an organic algorithm and nowadays algorithms can be re-engineered. Before too long Artificial Intelligences will take control of our world, leaving the great mass of mankind in a secondary position, but made peaceful by genetic manipulation. All this is alarming and lowering as I had cherished the illusion of human free will. Utopia is thus a dream I will miss out on but modern science will not prevent me proclaiming the proud words of Robert Burns:

Then let us pray that, come it may, 
(As come it will for all that) 
That Sense and Worth o'er all the earth 
Shall bear the gree and all that. 
For all that and all that, 
It's coming yet for all that, 
That Man to Man the world o'er
Shall brothers be for all that.

SMD

1.07.17

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2017