Good times are on the way

I'm tired
of being tired
but wary of being weary,
I'm hard-wired,
permanently anxious,
never unhurried,
somewhere in my stomach,
a giant butterfly sleeps,
I sit still cos I'm worried I'll wake it;
I don't crack a smile
cos I'm worried I'll break it,
if my face was a screen
it would scream 'Please wait...
preparing to hibernate'.
My battery's running low,
my system's a bit slow,
and probably needs an update.
The birds sing but it's not yet spring,
it's only winter on repeat,
and then there's the rain,
the slow drip, drip, drip of pain,
making the misery complete...

But-
despite the wind and the sleet,
the word on the street,
is that good times are on the way;
And so I pray,
for people both home and away,
knowing that in spite of the night,
somewhere else it is day.
How easily I forget to remember
that age, like a mortgage,
is just a number;
our frost-bitten dreams in December,
are still resolutely undead,
so finally I rest my head,
a pauper on a king-sized bed,
knowing good times are ahead,
some good times are ahead.

This morning on the way in to work, there were the usual garden-variety traffic jams, road blocks, diversions, invisible Men at Work (you can see the signs, but never the men. The only explanation is they're invisible. Personally, I would change the signs to Goblins at Work). Cars and their drivers were both frosty. Halfway into February, the sun still had its Out Of Office on, but there was the faintest whiff of spring in the air. It was either that or the air freshener in my car. (Long story but the essence is that this now works because my heating vents now work -hooray!-but then these probably work because the fans have unfrozen and that must mean that spring is indeed on the way.) Come on, Sun, stop slacking off and get to work!

Anyway, there I was, about ten miles in to my commute, singing along to Van Morrison and settling into auto-pilot when the dreaded flashing lights appeared in the distance... It meant only one thing. Major Accident. In my mind, I started the now familiar process of resigning myself to spending most of the morning in the car (hooray again for heating vents) when I noticed the lights were actually flashing on the other side of the road and it was the oncoming flow of traffic that was blocked, not ours. In a situation like this, I would normally just count my lucky stars (it's usually just the one star so it doesn't take too long to count) and then turn my focus back to covering as much distance as possible until the next incident on the road. This time, however, was slightly different. ..

A few years ago, when my fear of flying was at its worst, I was told by more than one person that travel by road was significantly more dangerous than air-travel, in terms of the odds of being in a fatal accident. I'm sure this little fact was meant to make me feel better at the time. Only problem is that these days, at 80 miles per hour, with the car in front swerving dangerously, and a fine mist forming across my windscreen, I suddenly wish I was in a plane.

Meanwhile at Junction 4, my car was still about 20 yards from the spot of the accident but I could tell it was serious. There were about three fire engines, two police cars and an ambulance. And smoke. Most likely, there was a fatality. As our queue of traffic inched slowly forward, I wondered whether it was purely a voyeuristic instinct that made people stop and stare, or whether there was something deeper going on; a collective realisation, perhaps, that that car could so easily have been ours, the people inside could just as easily have been us. Unconsciously, maybe both man and machine were coming together in a show of respect; taking a moment to whisper a prayer before moving on.

The fact is -without wanting to sound too dramatic- sometimes taking a car onto the motorway feels like the modern-day equivalent of taking a horse into battle. At any given time, people are up against some combination of fading light, mechanical failure, snow, fog, sleet, road-rage, fatigue, and speed guns. Every so often, you flirt with your own mortality. Not everyone makes it out alive, the rest merely live to fight another day.

Dear Mr President,

Last night I had a dream and you were in it. It was a dream of two parts, but both parts played out in my head in scenes from the movie 'Gladiator'. In the first part, you were standing up in the Emperor's box of the amphitheater with your arm outstretched and your thumb sideways in the air. There was an eerie silence as your thumb quivered slightly, and then a roar as you pointed it slowly downwards. In the second part, you were down in the dust of the arena, wearing a gladiator's armor that was lightly speckled with blood. You took off your helmet, raised your head to look up at the cheering mob and screamed "Are you not entertained?", your eyes ablaze with near-incandescent rage. The crowd continued to cheer while you dropped to your knees and wept. Then everything went dark.

I woke up to the news that you have now rejected another four mercy petitions, and seven more are on the way to you. Afzal Guru, the man whose plea you rejected a week ago, is now dead, killed to satisfy the collective conscience of our great nation. For what it's worth, my own conscience does not feel satisfied; in fact, of late it has been feeling distinctly uneasy. It is unnerving, particularly as it has forced me to examine my own flaws. I suspect there are many who feel the same way, even if only somewhere deep inside their being where these types of thoughts reside. But collective conscience, I assume, is more of a metaphysical thing, something greater than the sum of our individual consciences. I can see why the concept is comforting.

Anyway, I do not want to waste too much of your time. I am sure you have better things to do than read the nocturnal ramblings of a disenchanted citizen. The truth is, I cannot claim to have any knowledge of these people's innocence or guilt, or indeed the pressures that no doubt come with your job. You are, after all, both the Emperor and the gladiator. But before I go, I just wanted to share a little bit of dialogue from another movie called 'Schindler's List' which I would highly recommend that you watch, if you ever get the chance.

Oskar Schindler: Power is when we have every justification to kill, and we don't.
Amon Goeth: You think that's power?
Oskar Schindler: That's what the Emperor said. A man steals something, he's brought in before the Emperor, he throws himself down on the ground. He begs for his life, he knows he's going to die. And the Emperor... pardons him. This seemingly worthless man, he lets him go.
Amon Goeth: I think you are drunk.
Oskar Schindler: That's power, Amon. That is power.

Thank you, Mr President.

"The harder you work, the luckier you get." This quote has been attributed to a lot of people, including, for some strange reason, Jon Bon Jovi. My personal theory about this is that a lot of folks mention him as a source purely because his name is fun to say out loud (you just tried it, didn't you?), and not because he is also a sage/philosopher in addition to being a musician. Of course, there may be people who will claim he is both, while others may provide compelling arguments as to why he is neither, but that is not the point of this post. (As usual, my train of thought is pulling away slowly while I'm still running along the platform.)

Anyway, to continue... most cricket fans (of a certain age) will recall the moment Brian Charles Lara pulled a Chris Lewis delivery to break a 36-year-old record for the highest individual score in Test cricket. What is less known is that when Lara rocked back to play that shot, his foot brushed against the stumps and disturbed the bails. Amazingly, those little pieces of wood did a little split-second dance and fell back into place. The difference between Lara's eventual record score of 375 and 365 (hit-wicket) was a few measly millimetres. For those who think I've just made this little story up, please refer to evidence here.

Obviously, like many obsessive cricket fans, I relate most of what happens on the field to life in general. On this occasion- the profound (non-original) truth is this- at that moment, with a young man on the verge of one of his greatest sporting achievements, the universe conspired to make it possible. Put another way- those prepared to put in the 99.9 percent will, in almost every case, get that final 0.1 percent to fall for them too (call it luck, fate, destiny, match-fixing, whatever). Without the first, you can't really complain about the lack of the second.

Heights by great men reached and kept,
were not attained by sudden flight,
but they, while their companions slept,
were toiling upward in the night.
--- HW Longfellow/ Jon Bon Jovi

Arthur Ashe, the first African-American to win Wimbledon, tragically contracted AIDS from a blood transfusion during a heart operation. As his health deteriorated, he was once asked by a reporter how he felt. Had he ever asked himself ‘Why me?'

This was his response: “If you start asking that,” Ashe said, “when do you stop? If I asked why I had a bad heart, or why I got AIDS do I also have to ask why I won Wimbledon? Or why I’ve had this kind of life? When something bad happens, people have this way of forgetting their blessings. I don’t. I’ve had a wonderful life.”
He died on this day, 20 years ago, aged 49.

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