Looking back from retirement, strange business. Definitely on my road to recovery this week. I’m still finding difficult to muster any enthusiasm for writing this blog (I’m doing about one a week at the moment) but I’m managing to be a bit creative even if the blogs themselves are quite short (maybe none the worse for that) and my Tuesday schedule, the erstwhile gold standard of this blog, has gone a bit out of squew if that’s a word, certainly my spell check doesn’t like it.
Anyway better something than nothing as they say. I’ve also started watching some TV (and a bit of reading) which doesn’t sound much of an achievement but at my sickest I couldn’t even manage this, so be grateful for small mercies. One of the programmes I started watching was about Westminster Abbey. I like historical stuff so no great surprise here but what did surprise me was this strange feeling I got as I watched it. No, not indigestion although I’ve had plenty of that recently.
No, the strange feeling was a glow (wait for it) of pride about many things British and specifically it came as a result of looking back over our history. A tricky business sure enough given that our British hands aren’t exactly what you might call squeaky clean with our empire dealings and all that side of things.
The programme was largely set in Poet’s Corner and the placement of a stone to commemorate Sir John Gielgud as it happened. It reminded me that we do in fact have lots to be proud of us in our history aside from our violence towards others. A creative, artistic, poetic, literary side which, as I say, gave me a warm glow.
And why would you be surprised by this, you ask? Isn’t everybody proud of their national achievements? Well I don’t know if it was my post-Covid state of mind or just generally a bit battered out of shape but the thing is if you’d asked me perhaps until this very moment whether I was a forward-looking person, I would have replied most certainly, I’m quite obsessed with making plans for the future and often being driven by being quite dissatisfied with the present.
More to the point I’ve never been very interested in looking back. Yes, to some extent nationally but not personally and yet here I was not only considering my country’s historical achievements but also, Gawd help me, my own.
As I say, rarely my own and yet here I was almost wallowing in my past. Not let me reassure you in any glorified or smug way at my achievements but simply at my childhood and that set in its pit village was very modest indeed. I passed the 11 plus which sent somewhat fortuitously to grammar school which undoubtedly opened up a whole new world, but nothing fancy. A surprisingly good O level year and a predictably disastrous A level which sent me to art college where, other than meeting Mrs Summerhouse, nothing much any good happened. But hey, gift horses and mouths and all that.
Not that I’m suggesting Mrs SH resembles a horse, but the point is that after an indifferent time in Derby and Leeds art colleges I applied to do a Master’s at the Royal College and The Slade and was quite rightly rejected. So here I am looking back with affection both at my own experiences and even those of my country men and women.
Anyway the point is that, in my salt water gargling, lozenge sucking, paracetamol swallowing haze, looking back over my life somehow seemed like quite the thing to do. What on earth am I thinking or does this not deserve the title thinking?
Looking back from retirement Summary
I suppose the most likely explanation is that I’m simply losing my mind, drug-addled, early onset something or other. But then it could just be that, given time to ponder and very little inclination to do anything more strenuous, it gave me the space to look back fondly over some bits of my life. Unusual for me, as I say, but it can’t be a sin to engage in this kind of activity when the dreaded C strikes you down and does it quite badly though I say so myself.