JOYS OF LIFE

 

If you have the misfortune to be a pessimist, or more accurately, a party-pooper, for sure there has been plenty in 2021 to be dismal about. Let us draw a discreet veil over this difficult year and contemplate pleasant things, wherever they can be found. Let us look about us and rejoice at what has survived The Flood, The Tsunami and The Great Plague and all the pains that flesh is heir to. Actually, although there have been some nasty moments, The Apocalypse never arrived and we can look forward to 2022 with ever-burgeoning confidence.

Perhaps, my good readers, you can join me in a little game. List a very pleasant sound, an agreeable smell and a memorable sensation: Take your pick - My choices:

Sound – the satisfying pop as a cork under pressure takes its leave of its bottle of Champagne, Prosecco or other such bubbly delights.

Smell – the highly inviting aroma of frying bacon, to stimulate the taste buds and fortify your day.

Sensation – (not one I have experienced for 50 years!) the shudder on your fly-fishing rod as at last you hook a plump sea-trout, which will give you a gallant battle but end up deliciously that night grillé en beurre on your dinner plate.

All these simple blessings survive, thank goodness!

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Some simple Joys of Life

Moving on from these fragrant memories, I thought of the lives of people we admire or who have given us moments of pleasure. Many of these reveries will be private or otherwise sensitive but I believe many will share my respect for HM the Queen indomitably embarking from February 2022 on her Platinum Jubilee Year, now widowed and carrying the burden of a somewhat dysfunctional family. We might also salute retiring Angela Merkel, who has steered her great country for 16 years through many crises and retained a hand on the tiller of an often-chaotic European Union. As the baton of formidable interrogator moves on from splendid Jeremy Paxman, we welcome soft-spoken Clive Myrie and the more abrasive Laura Kuenssberg. We celebrate the life of dynamic Desmond Tutu, who fought so doughtily to make South Africa a more just Rainbow nation, showing there was some life in Anglicanism at least overseas.  Surely all were delighted that pretty Emma Raducanu won the American Open tennis in her debut year.

                                                             

 

                    Some Life-enhancers of 2021

These people allow us to forget the many Dismal Jimmies infesting our world including First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon, Imperial College, London’s Professor Neil Ferguson, Public Health England’s Jenny Harries, France’s Emmanuel Macron, Remainer Andrew Adonis and a host of sour others whose apparent main aim in life is to depress us.

Begone dull care, and let’s have fun and laughter in 2022! Nostalgically I summon up one of my earliest cinema memories to set the mood, Fred Astaire and Judy Garland performing A Couple of Swells from Irving Berlin’s Easter Parade of 1948. Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3aUAiLU0TI&ab_channel=WarnerBros.Entertainment

 

SMD

29.12.21

Text copyright Sidney Donald 2021

TOWARDS SERENITY

 

TOWARDS SERENITY

Watching profoundly deaf Rose Ayling-Ellis with her partner Giovanni winning Strictly, I was struck by her serenity, fortified of course by her gossamer lightness of foot and classic posture. In conversation she is naturally and cheerfully outgoing, ignoring her handicaps, although she dedicated her win to the deaf community. Her serene quality probably won her the trophy (others were maybe better dancers technically) as it is an unusual gift in our hectic world and one I believe we should all emulate.

                                                    Giovanni and Rose dance serenely

The world is short of serenity, if you exclude the Dalai Lama and the resigned inmates of life’s bulging last chance saloons. Certainly, in public life there is plenty passion, much vociferousness and bile galore – serenity hardly gets a look in. Close to home, our dynamic Boris, beset by enemies has to fight off assaults hourly, though many of his wounds are sadly self-inflicted. I wonder if his past Turkish ancestry attracts him to sessions of dervish-whirling at no 10, so much more relaxing than hostile press conferences or Cobra meetings about the perils of the omicron Covid strain. After such a twirling session, a serene Boris would be ready for valiant action, which he and the country dearly need.

                    Boris dreamily contemplating?

But we are much too passionate nowadays about politics. I admit to some personal guilt; on occasion I can be vehemently partisan, usually in the Tory cause, perhaps defending the indefensible. Yet the class-based venom of Angela Rayner, the weary pomposity of Ian Blackford and the smug grand-standing of Ed Davey greatly annoy the long-suffering UK electorate. We would, for example, prefer to be on amicable talking terms with the EU, despite manifold provocations and perhaps the shock resignation of the excellent, if combative Brexit Secretary, Lord Frost, gives a chance of promotion to Jacob Rees-Mogg, an ardent Brexiteer but also a civilized toff who is never impolite and is an English gentleman down to the tip of his pin-striped trousers. In truth he is an acquired taste as his opinions are often a throw-back to Edwardian times, but they were, after all, “the good old days”.

                                      A serene Jacob Rees-Mogg

We do need to inject some serenity into our universities. Free speech used to be its prized possession, but now a speaker or academic who expresses an opinion offensive to the Woke is liable to be “cancelled” and persecuted with the approval of boneless-wonder Vice-Chancellors and the baying insults of the local rent-a-mob rabble. The Canadian sage Jordan Peterson suffered nastily from the attentions of the Woke, mainly at Cambridge, but he has fought back and has been reinstated. He graced The Spectator with a flattering article on “Why I love Great Britain” – our strength comes from our traditions of intellectual freedom, not from military might nor brutish behaviour. May the towers of Oxford dream on, Jeremy Bentham’s body preside over UCL and Rhodes’ statue smile upon Oriel and the University of which he was such a generous benefactor.

I have the good fortune to be in Athens for the festive season, whose intellectual pedigree is unsurpassed. The shades of Plato, Socrates, Aeschylus et al will smile here at the corruption of the political classes and at the army of ignorant anti-vaxxers awaiting the scythe of the covid plague. Our world is full of good and beautiful people and achievements. Drink deep of this bounty, enjoy the love of family and friends, have a splendid Christmas and plan and prepare for a stimulating 2022.

Acquire serenity!

 

SMD

19.12.21

Text copyright © Sidney Donald 2021