The first six
or seven days
of a new year,
find me all at
sixes and sevens:
What year is this?
What just happened?
What happens next?
How old am I?
Did I just waste
twelve whole months?
Will I do better
this year?
Should I stop reading
obituaries?
What am I going
to do with my life?
But after a week,
or so,
it becomes just
another year
and I get on
with life.
It would be good,
now and then,
to have a
visitor from
the future
drop in, say “Hi,
what year is this?”,
and, on being told,
reply “Oh, well, it
will all be ok
in the end, you
know.” But what
if he just frowned,
thoughtfully?
We all know
that Friday the
Thirteenth is
just another day,
really.
But it is good
to be reminded,
now and then,
that our lives
are subject to
chance, accident,
randomness, and
that around every
corner there may be
a banana skin.
I’ve always
been the
trendsetter
who set a trend
of not setting
trends
When I see an
unusual
familiar name
in the news,
I think, “Oh
that must be
the daughter
(or son) of
someone who
I once knew”.
Turns out,
these days,
it’s usually
a grandchild.
Viewed from afar,
in ignorance,
really, and with
no dog in the hunt,
no skin in the game,
no horse in the race,
it seems to me
that America has
recently refought
her Civil War,
but this time
the South won.
If I had known
then what I know
now, I would
have done some things
differently,
would have done
different
things. But then I
wouldn’t have known
the same things now
as I knew just
a moment ago.
We all, I think
make the mistake,
of confusing
actors with the
roles they play on
stage. But we are
all actors on
the stage of life.
Don’t confuse me
with roles I play.
I reached my
seventies, it
seemed, in a rush.
Suddenly I was
wandering in
a forest of years:
71, 77, 73, 78,
74, and look,
over there, at
the edge of the
forest, is 79.
And I think,
“I won’t be in
this forest very
long, for I am
running through
it. I should make
up my mind soon
what I am going
to do with my
life.”
Clive James and
Jonathan
Miller are
dead? What is
that bell I
hear tolling?
