Rarely have I read about a more cynical, bitter, and air-brained load of tripe as that issuing from the mouth of Formula 1 boss Max Mosley this week. I can only imagine it originates in his frosty relationship with McLaren boss Ron Dennis. Basically, he says that we should all not get excited about Lewis Hamilton (Dennis' protege), because if it wasn't him emerging it would be someone else, and in any case it's a bad thing to have someone dominating the sport because it makes it boring. Can you believe this man?

For a start, Lewis Hamilton did not dominate this season — in case Mosley has forgotten, he didn't even win the championship — and what's more, the success that he did have was so exciting and remarkable precisely because it was so original. Not only in the sense that he broke a bunch of records, but more importantly because he actually has the intelligence and skill to race and overtake. What with the changes to F1 car specification regulations, and the overall level of competition at the top of F1 at the moment, I see absolutely no signs that the next few years are going bear any resemblance to the days of Michael Schumacher's dominance.

Tags: mosley, hamilton, lewishamilton, maxmosley, rondennis, formulaone.

Labels: formulaone

Skin

Obedient daily dress,

You cannot always keep

That unfakable young surface.

You must learn your lines —

Anger, amusement, sleep;

Those few forbidding signs

Of the continuous coarse

Sand-laden wind, time;

You must thicken, work loose

Into an old bag

Carrying a soiled name.

Parch then; be roughened; sag;

And pardon me, that I

Could find, when you were new,

No brash festivity

To wear you at, such as

Clothes are entitled to

Till the fashion changes.

—Philip Larkin

Tags: skin, larkin, philip.

Labels: poetry

Absolutely everything I do is boring.

Former priest of our parish seems to have killed himself this week, which is slightly strange news. I never knew the man, but by all accounts he did an excellent job. It makes you wonder what kind of place church must have been for him, and highlights, sadly, how those with the most giving and generous personalities can often struggle to value themselves, even, or especially, in an ecclesiastical environment.

Tags: nicholasclapp, priest, death.

Labels: church

All this stuff about Menzies Campbell having to resign because he was "too old" is complete tosh. He had to resign because he lacked charisma, public presence, and anything resembling inspiring policies. These deficiencies, we should know only too well, can afflict persons of any age. And to show that you can be of a certain age and still very successful as an active politician, take Ken Clarke and Tony Benn. Truth is, British politics is so crowded around the centre ground that a party like the Liberal Democrats is doomed to struggle for identity until some catastrophe strikes the nation. (Hence their popularity during the Iraq war.)

Tags: menziescampbell, menzies, campbell, libdem, libdems, liberaldemocrats, liberal, democrats, resignation, politics, kenclarke, tonybenn, iraq, war, britain

Labels: politics

Anyone interested in the bizarre behind-the-scenes world of professional snooker would be well advised to read this interview with John Higgins in the Sunday Herald (via Snooker Scene). He talks about the crazy decision taken in Shanghai earlier this year to put his first-round world final rematch with Mark Selby on a non-televised table, and reveals that he almost walked out of the tournament as a result. Plummeting prize money, and a number of other recent questionable decisions, raise the spectre of another rebellion by the top players, and (who knows) perhaps even the start of a rival world tour. This almost happened about seven years ago, when TSN (now 110sport) allegedly had all the venues booked up for a breakaway tour. Somehow everyone stayed together though, a few heads rolled at World Snooker, and everyone carried on much as before. It's a shame snooker is so mismanaged; but Higgins has the right idea in this interview. It's time to explore new audiences within Europe and grow the invitational circuit as a means of supporting and growing the ranking events. Who blames Ronnie O'Sullivan for pulling out of so many tournaments lately? It doesn't sound like snooker's a very fun — or profitable — place to be right now.

Tags: snooker, higgins, osullivan, sundayherald, markselby, selby

Labels: snooker

Though we think our thoughts are ours by choice, and our ills a mere consequence of our own recklessly unhealthy life, it may well be that, just as papilionaceous plants produce a seed of a certain shape, our family hands down to us the ideas which keep us alive, as well as the illness which will cause our death.

— In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, Penguin 2002, p469

Labels: readingproust

Because they take your breath away?

Tags: humour, stupid, plasticbag.

Labels: humour, photography

The thousands unlock their doors

and in flies reality

uninvited.

Perhaps we just wanted to sit

for a lifetime or two

and not see it.

Perhaps we just wanted to sit

and have our own plates

to eat our cheese.

Labels: poetry

Just listening to Radiohead's new album, In Rainbows. It's great that they have some new material out, the first since 2003, but it's kind of disappointingly samey. That's not to say it's not good; The Bends and OK Computer both spoke in pretty much the same musical language, and both were great albums. I just feel they need to find somewhere new to go, which I suppose is hard after the apex (in my view) of Amnesiac.

Tags: radiohead, inrainbows, album.

Labels: music

Perspective nightmare:

A confined space.

Forever onwards, forwards:

Closer. Further away.

2002

Tags: poetry, poem, perspective

Labels: poetry

When I was still at school, I often used to stay at a beloved friend's house over the weekend. They were wonderful days: an occasional escape to an ideal and myth that I then had no inclination was anything but real and tangible. Awoken early by the cats, I would go downstairs before him, sometimes chatting to his rich middle-class parents, to whom I then somehow aspired in spite of assuming myself to be a leftwinger opposed to such nonsense. Perhaps the explanation lay in the fact that these ageing middle-class stalwarts also assumed themselves to be leftwingers, and on Saturday mornings when they were away I would pick up the Independent and Guardian (yes, both) from the doormat, make myself some coffee, do some toast on the aga, and settle down to an hour or two of reading pieces by luminaries such as Guy Browning, through whose nauseatingly cynical and repetitive columns I had not yet seen. Yes, I presumed this world to be real: I presumed that getting the lefty papers was equivalent to actually having a mind and beliefs of your own. But then, I aspired to living the aga-fuelled, cat-owning, G2-reading life, because it seemed to offer the future I wanted. How did I not see how narcissistic it really is?

When I was at school, as much as I hated the institution's quiet establishment conservatism, I had — quite erroneously — assumed that there was a tacit understanding amongst my peers that This Is A Load Of Bollocks. In fact, except for a very small minority, I had, for the best part of eight years, made the absurd assumption that my fellow pupils must harbour some kind of left-wing, anti-establishment, if not anti-capitalist beliefs, not necessarily through a conviction that they were true, but simply because we were young and That's What You're Supposed To Think At That Age. Recently I have had to come to terms with an uncomfortable truth. Most of those people probably were never, and certainly are now not, anything resembling liberal, broad-minded or anti-establishment. The dubious joys of Facebook have revealed to me how quickly most of my class have landed gut-wrenchingly shiny corporate jobs. I've even received a few forwarded chain mails from the most base members of my year saying things like "Signn here if u fink immigration is to high and BRITAIN IS FuLL!!!1111".

Yet we're all still only 22 or 23. It is an oft-invoked mantra that you get more conservative as you get older, and it would make sense. When we are young, as the experience with my friend's Guardian-reading household testifies, life is full of possibility: most of our events are in the future, still to come; there is nothing yet to be conservative about. And when we are old, we are aware of our age, aware of the ever-diminishing number of future possibilities open to us, aware of when we are doing things for the last time, and we grieve for their loss. Conservatism, at its worst, is an over-indulgent sense of grief, a grief that must always remain private and closed to others. Ever wondered why the Conservatives fight amongst themselves so much? But my peers worry me. At this rate, if they're this conservative by the age of 23, Loughborough Grammar School year of 2002 will be forming Britain's first BNP-majority parliament by 2035.

But I am still posed the conundrum. Once upon a time, that Guardian-, aga- and cat-filled life promised something. Now, because time changes us, it no longer promises me anything. We all need promises and possibilities, and — I admit it — passion, or at least excitement, has to come into it somewhere. Yet our dominant cultural myths — of career, family, fame, vocation — act to cover up for this teleological poverty (what many erroneously call "aspirational" poverty). The truth is, we don't have an answer, and we muddle through life mimetically, that is, conservatively, yet claim personal authenticity through the threadbare clichés of consumer culture. Where should we go? At the moment, only towards the individual, the real individual which, rejecting these conservative myths, strives after its own individuality through encounter and dialogue with another. And the aim of this individuality? Responsibility, action, and change.

Tags: school, action, culture

Labels: politics