On 40 year-old-version and the Second Innings

Radha Blank of 'The Forty-Year-Old Version' isn't late — Mid-life crisis? Or moment of insight?

With unhelpful timing, I have been contacted by Test and Trace and have to self-isolate for the next fortnight. At least before I retired to the confines of my flat I had the chance to take the Prime Minister’s advice and go to the cinema. Little of his advice impresses me, but a visit to my local Curzon did do wonders for my spirits and my thoughts. I went to see ’40 year-old Version’ which won lead actor and star, Radha Blank, the directing prize, at the Sundance Festival. And I was the only viewer. Having a private cinema may enhance the experience, I think.

What caught my eye was that she was playing a ‘down on her luck’ playwright and that she finds her voice (again) by rapping. I love rap, and am slightly mystified by hip hop culture, as though it is a party to which I have not been invited. A cultural hang up? A white skinned defence mechanism? Probably. What I love is the ‘street poetry’’. Wordsmithery fascinates me in all its guises and this is where ideas, wit and variety are currently best displayed. So, my expectations were quite high. They were more than met.

What is it? Well, in the first place it is an achingly, thoughtfully, observed grief memoir. The film is a sort of enhanced biographical story. My psychoanalytical studies are more Freudian than Jungian, but as I understood it there is a great deal of Jungian influence in this film. First, the idea of some self-discovery in mid-life, and then the pursuit of one’s best version of oneself. For Jung that was achieving self-actualisation through the pursuit of individuation. It only occurred to me some time after I had first written a ‘Second Innings’ blog, that that might be what I was doing. Now I saw it played out in front of my eyes.

Jung was also aware of, and fascinated by, the differences in the self we present to the world and the fact that it was not the inner or true self, and that getting to know and be comfortable with the true self was part of the individuation process. In an interview that I read about Blank, she said that the character, who transforms from the unfulfilled playwright and teacher to the alter ego, RadhaMUSPrime, rap contestant/creative, was an enhanced version of herself. But it seems likely that the rapper might be the self that Blank has kept from the public in order to present her ‘best self’.

Why is it a grief memoir? Because when she started work on it, she lost her mother, and the loss of the film’s lead’s mother is contributing to an existential crisis she suffers. One of the three central relationships she has in the film (her gay best friend, her young DJ lover and her brother), is brought to life when they share experiences about losing their mothers. It directly leads to her becoming free, creatively and sexually, and an extraordinarily tender rapprochement with her brother.

It is also a riff on the creativity we all possess and what happens when it is blocked or stymied. In her case the overwhelming need for white patronage is destroying her ability to write in her true voice. When she does, it means nothing gets beyond workshop-only productions or unpaid work in a Blacks-only theatre company. To release her creativity, she returns to her school-age persona and to rhyming. From there comes the idea of rapping and the serendipitous meeting with D, the cool and laconic DJ provider of the beats. He has his own grief and sadnesses to overcome and their incredibly tender relationship is both sexually charged, but also his need to succumb to a missing maternal figure. His journey seems more Freudian.

Their relationship is one of the power of human connection and of trying one’s best not to be judgmental. His respect for her, when she arrives to show off her rhyming and pays with the weed that represents the appropriate ‘currency’, means he follows her in secret when she takes a 2am train home. The generations skip and he is paternalistically ready to protect her. She unlocks something in him when she identifies his music interests and skills with an LP of John Coltrane’s. It turns out that it was part of the legacy his mother gave him and it unlocks him.

The film deals tenderly with the issues of race and identity. Identity is best represented by her white, Korean occasionally prissy, gay friend, counter-posed with her as a large black woman, contemptuous of over-fussiness with dress codes and the trappings of his elegant apartment. It is also expressed in the brilliant scenes of ‘Queen of the Ring’, when a young, Moslem girl is rapping and references her hijab. Western ideas of Moslem women, of passivity, and what their attire expresses, are upstaged by the aggression this woman displays and the context of a location inside a pugilist’s ring.

One other identity is the city. There is a deep, but compromised love in her relationship with it. When she is driven to the ‘Queen of the Ring’ contest she rails against returning to the Bronx. It feels to her like a recognition that her life has returned to unpromising beginnings and that she has not escaped her past. And yet, it is a magical moment and allows her mind to open, and her body too, as she spends the nights in the arms of her 26-year-old admirer.

What is expressed unconsciously is an identification with the city’s regeneration and resilience. In the play within the play, which she finally gets produced at a mainstream theatre, the theme is gentrification. Specifically, it is the changing face of Harlem. Underlying the whole film is the ability to regenerate and display resilience. It is what she is living and doing, and it is what the city has done. It feels particularly apt when city lives are having to demonstrate resilience and adaptability now, when the charms of the urban lifestyle are being questioned by the pernicious effects of the virus.

Two other important themes. Social commentaries. First, is a proud nod to the value of teachers. Blank’s character has little respect for her mother’s role as a teacher, and is more focused on her mother’s ‘failure’ as an artist, just as she is failing. She refers to her ‘struggle’ and having to teach. To her teaching is representative of her also failing artistically, and her struggling is a very tangible note of how badly teachers are remunerated. And yet, she transforms the lives of those students who join her post school drama workshop. In turn, they show their support for her as she explores rapping and when her play is finally put on. She heals relationships in their group and draws words and ideas from teens, still struggling to articulate what they truly mean.

Lastly, it is about family ties. How can any examination of a mid-life and of stalled creativity be anything other than a trawl of the psyche, and therefore an insight into familial bonds? In this representation, it is made clear that we need to get comfortable with who we are and not to run from our past. Radha finally meets up with her brother and they decide on what to do with their mother’s belongings, especially one impressive large canvas, in the apartment she once filled. As she contemplates what little is left behind, her brother gently reminds her, and chides her, that the greatest creations were the two of them, and that was what their mother and most parents know.

I have used the words tenderness and tenderly in this commentary. As I conclude, I find myself thinking again and again just how tender most of the film is despite, or perhaps because of the grimy locations and the fact that it is shot in black and white. The interaction with the alcoholic street dweller who ‘lives’ nearby, defecates in the street and berates her for her arid sex life may not seem a representation of tenderness, but she gives him a sandwich as the film comes to a close and he lets her know that she failed to apply the mayonnaise to both slices of bread. Rather than thank her, he thinks she may be poisoning him. And yet, the whole exchange is rueful and tender, and he represents her need to make something of herself and to use her own voice.

I loved it.

On a cinema return – peak confusion with ‘Tenet’

Christopher Nolan caught John David Washington with a backpack full of Pringles while he was supposed to be dieting for 'Tenet' — Tenet

Last week, I had the joy of my first theatre visit since the March lockdown. (Try to see Talking Heads at The Bridge). This week, it was my first cinema visit. Encouraged and inspired by my son, who had already seen it, I joined him at my local Curzon to see Christopher Nolan’s Tenet. A couple of days later I find myself reappraising the experience and trying to understand a film that I enjoyed. I think. Can you truly enjoy a film that left you frequently, repeatedly, perplexed? It is a film about a temporal pincer movement. And war prevention. Confused? It gets little easier. Small, modest, hopefully largely insignificant, spoilers to follow.

Simple things first. What is it like to be back in the cinema? For me, in this year of the unusual and the abnormal, it was a refreshingly ‘normal’ process. We walked to the cinema, put on our face-coverings, flashed my downloaded tickets on my smartphone at the bar staff / receptionist and ordered a Diet Coke and a Pinot Grigio. This was a similar experience to The Bridge Theatre, although that included a specific time slot to arrive and an impressive temperature-taking exercise, before making it into the lobby area.

The differences are apparent inside. The Bridge has reconfigured seating and reduced capacity by about two thirds. It looks pretty cool, even if it is hardly likely to be economic. My theatre-going date and I drank our wines, but otherwise were masked up, and at one point reminded to be so. In the cinema, the screening room looks, and is, completely unchanged. None of the seats have been removed, although which ones are sold is part of a social distancing policy. We had little difficulty with proximity to other patrons. We sat side by side, three rows back (of about ten rows) from the screen, and were alone for a 6pm showing. We removed our masks.

I love cinema experiences and the modern iteration of comfortable armchairs and sofa, and the availability of refreshments, has transformed the experience I had when I was younger. Even so, cinema is about what is projected from the screen and not about the comfort of the seating or the decor. We had picked the right film to remind ourselves of that immersion into other worlds. Few things can be as ‘other worldly’ than Tenet.

The cleverness begins with the title. Minds much sharper than mine will recognise a palindrome and know that must have significance. We are about to watch something that plays with the similarities of things going backwards and forwards, so the title is clever. It is even cleverer when I see that the number ten is what is expressed going forward and backward in the title, because the denouement of the film involves two military teams coming to a point in time, from ten minutes in the past and ten in the future. Still with me?

If you know your Physics and you understand entropy, you will find it a doddle. I had to look it up and it pays a little research. A little familiarity with ‘inversion’ and the destructive power of radiation might pay dividends too. Essentially the plot hinges on an algorithm with the power to reverse the world’s stream of time. Setting off the algorithm, ends the world. Playing with time, needless to note, is dangerous. Meeting our future self can lead to personal annihilation. For a Freudian student like me the concepts of annihilation and his ‘death drive’ and Thanatos, the personification of death, are profoundly fascinating.

Kenneth Branagh plays a marvellously sadistic baddie revelling in a distinctive, but maybe not totally faithful Russian accent. He is a corrupt man who has sold his soul in a Faustian pact to agents of ‘the Future’. His motivation is his impending death. He has an inoperable cancer – the plot hinges on nuclear accidents and criminal opportunism – and wants nobody to outlive him. He will catalyse the destruction of the world. His tool is the algorithm which he has pieced together (nine parts) by utilising the ability to move forwards and backwards through time.

This is the point where the film indulges in a little of what I call ‘green moralising’. In the future everything is destroyed and cannot support life. The Future blames us, living in its past, for destroying the planet. Hence its desire to kill people (the agents of its world’s destruction) from the past. If it can kill, and reverse the entropy of the Earth, climate change could be prevented. At least, I think that was the point! This leads to wonderful verbal exchanges about ‘the grandfather paradox’. which are worth the ticket price alone.

The hero is ‘the Protagonist’. A some time, a perhaps still operating, CIA operative, he is brilliantly played by John David Washington. He is physically heroic, but mentally dubious. He is able to reveal humility and to take direction when it is essential. He is also romantic enough to want to value the life of an apparently doomed woman, and who more than one of the major characters regards as expendable, in meeting the task of saving the planet from world ending conflict. Perhaps, best of all, is the subversive character of the world’s most vicious arms dealer being an elegant Indian woman. Or maybe a future self, in combat with a current self and posing the question to the viewer about which self has the best motives.

I wanted to convey the thrill of being back in the cinema. I think some films can stand being streamed on a laptop, or watched on a TV screen, but some need a big screen and a large dark room. This is one. The special effects are brilliant, but the film needs the throb and threat conveyed by the music. It is best enjoyed at high volume in a cinema environment. I realised that I had missed this. I am still more likely to choose a theatre performance over a film given the choice, and I hope to be at the National when it restarts next month, but it was great to be reminded of the magic of film. And I don’t think you need to understand it all! My son was watching it for the second time, and thinks he understands it better for the repeat view. I may have to go back.

Has lockdown made you angry? Or angrier?

Back in the early days of lockdown, as March became April, the first articles appeared about how it might change our world. Initial thoughts were inspiring, considered and considerate. We were going to be more aware of the environment. We were going to value the utility of workers. We were going to pay some in the ‘front-line’; not merely clap for them. We were going to appreciate those doing the dirtiest labour, and be especially grateful if they had come to these shores, to escape from a war-torn home or an economic collapse. We were going to slow down, both activities and thoughts. We were going to smell the coffee and a lot else besides.

As the six-month mark approaches of a world adjusted to the impact of coronavirus, it seems to me to be a good time to take an emotional temperature check. For many, this has been a difficult time. Personal liberties have been affected. Some have been forced into unwelcome shared living arrangements. Others have been forced to deal with an imposed solitude. Still more of us, tragically, are grieving. Grief comes to us all and there is no universal approach to dealing with its impact, but forced into funeral non-attendance, and in many cases, unable to say final goodbyes, means the collective weight of this nation’s grieving seems heavier than usual, notwithstanding the sinister terminology of ‘excess deaths’.

Based on my far from large sampling, which is definitely not widely representative and appropriate for extrapolations, I sense that all that communal goodwill which seemed to be a feature of early lockdown, has become a bubbling fresh anger. An international, widespread anger. Potentially, a very disturbing anger. It may be that being at home, often alone, for longer means more time spent in social media echo-chambers, which skews moods and temperament. Nonetheless, I have been reminded that Gogol claimed that without anger ‘not much can be said,’ because ‘only in anger is the truth uttered.’

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

In a slightly different context, Malcolm Bull once wrote these words in a LRB article, “Over the past decade it has become commonplace to claim that the world is divided between the passionless few in whose interests it is run and an angry multitude whose interests are ignored.” The description “angry multitude” is what has been on my mind.

I recently read about how Sweden is becoming prey to angry right wing political movements. Sweden is generally perceived as liberal and consensus supporting. It has adopted a policy to the virus that is libertarian and akin to ‘herd immunity’ that most nations have eschewed. Generally personal liberties are respected. So why all the anger? A couple of Fridays ago, a large riot broke out in Malmo after apparent far-right sympathisers burned a Koran in an immigrant suburb. Violence, race inspired or otherwise, has already been called Sweden’s “second pandemic”.

Sweden has witnessed over 200 shootings and 24 deaths as the collateral damage of this collective angry psyche. In what may be the very appropriately named Gothenburg suburb, Angered, which has a large immigrant population, criminal gangs now control people movement thanks to their own roadblocks. Interior Minister, Mikael Damberg commented “it’s not really economics or taxes that are the main sources of conflict in Swedish politics – values, identity, crime that is where the debate is”.

In the US of course, it is government strategy to fuel identity differences. We need reminding that all humans share 99% of genes and that only 1% of our genes impact our individual differences. The US President blithely talked about “great patriots” when people attacked the BLM protest rallies held after the luckless black man, Jacob Blake, was shot seven times as he attempted to get into his own car.

I am not going to identify with Trumpian patriots or BLM activists but to try to understand the intensity of the anger. Sure, group processes, as any psychologist will tell you, cause more extremes of behaviour and sentiment than any individual would feel, as individuals ‘group identify’, but where does this deep-seated and now, murderous antipathy come from? Yes, there is manipulation by political leaders for their own ends but the underlying anger and hatred is appalling, or intriguing, depending on your view. Anger is contagious. One wonders at how the participants in the rallies will react when their activity, much captured by cameras, is played back to them.

The supporters of ‘law and order’ might argue that protests inflame and incite. Alas, few people who have read any history cannot have failed to note that protesters of whichever hue, generally have history shine a favourable light upon them. And importantly, to protest requires huge courage, often putting bodies at risk of physical harm. It is not just lockdown UK that I sense has become angrier. Far more profound anger and resentment is behind most of the collective mood in Belarus and in Hong Kong.

In the UK, I watch Anti-vaccers and Anti-maskers etc. making their own protests. The “if you are not with us, you are against us” attitude that affects Extinction Rebellion intrigues me. The Times has (unhelpfully?) published a Brazilian study that suggests that people inclined to be anti-mask and anti-vaccine are sociopaths, and have the dark trinity of personality traits including narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism. Whatever position one takes on these issues, we should still be happy to think Voltaire-like, and disagree, but defend the right to express contra-opinion.

As I thought about whether collective anger is rising, which often leads to poor outcomes, I started to think more about what anger is and whether it was a bad thing. I am getting more interested in it. I have changed my view about the need for it to be expressed. Venting anger often allows it to subside. In many cases, it disappears. The short period of inflammation is doused by exposure, rather than given fresh oxygen. Is it a clinical syndrome, rather than an emotion linked to mental disorders? My dictionary says it is “hot displeasure, often involving a desire for retaliation”. Angrier is to be “excited with anger, to be inflamed”.

Aristotle defined it as “a desire, accompanied by pain, for apparent revenge in response to an apparent insult to oneself or one’s own from persons who ought not to insult one.” Do revenge and retaliation have a legitimate role in society or one’s personal life? Socrates insists that we should never return wrong for wrong, injury for injury. Socrates was not commanding his followers to turn the other cheek, but a thinker reminding his friend Crito of the conclusion of many arguments they had shared: the urge to hit back is demeaning and harmful to anyone who succumbs to it.

Seneca took the view (‘De Ira’ or ‘On Anger’) that anger is the only emotion that can, occasionally, impact a whole nation. ‘No entire people has ever burned with love for a woman, no whole state has set its hope on money or gain; ambition seizes individuals one by one; only fury plagues whole communities at once.’ He had in mind vengeance against an enemy. I wonder if the virus has become our unseen enemy and anger, which we recognise is a feeling that rises within us, is bubbling up. Our collective psyche is affected; we sense a change in us, a shortness of temper, an irritability.

I read about a young waitress who had returned to work and was working intensively thanks to the Chancellor’s ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ scheme. She reflected, not on being able to earn some money, or on the pleasure of working with customers again, but on how a customer had been rude to her and complained about the speed of service. What possesses a man, alas it was a man, to be rude to a staff member rather than be grateful that the establishment was open, and happy that it was full enough for him to have to wait a little to be served?

As part of my psychotherapy work, I shall be involved in an Infant Observation seminar group. I will think about anger as expression in a neonate and infant. I think of it as innate rather than learned, so it has a purpose. We need something like anger as part of our ‘fight or flight’ stimuli. When I was growing up, children were expected to be much more ‘seen and not heard’. Tantrums were unwelcome. Anger and frustration, however clumsily and inarticulately expressed was a ‘bad thing’ and ‘bad behaviour’ and usually invited a punishment. In other words, a sanction on top of a punishment, as the original cause of the anger was still not resolved.

When I was a parent I expected my children to be ‘well behaved’ and in a post-smacking world, used whatever means I could to coerce them into behaving. I now realise that much of what drove my approach was about the desire to have other adults compliment my wife and I on our good parenting, rather than paying attention to my children’s own needs. Anger is a protest and, especially for the young, is about not being listened to. Not being heard is a key anger-catalyst, as I imagine most racial minorities, physically or mentally disabled people and non-heterosexual beings might agree. I did not read many parenting books, perhaps I should have done, but I wonder how many lead with the need to listen to your child.

If a child is not heard, they learn to internalise anger – the “what’s the point?” attitude to life, which affects all their adult relationships. It is likely to lead to passive-aggressive behaviour to “get back” at people, without telling them why, or being hostile and critical openly. Even when anger seems like an instantaneous, knee-jerk reaction to provocation, there’s always some other feeling that gave rise to it. And this particular feeling is precisely what the anger has contrived to camouflage. In other words, it is reactive, and often it is reacting to fear.

Photo by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels.com

I learned a little about the physiological effect of anger. One of the hormones the brain secretes during anger arousal is norepinephrine, experienced by the organism as an analgesic. So, we numb ourselves when confronted by the threat of physical or psychological pain. This may partly explain why our decision making is often so poor when we are angered. It seems that when we cannot comfort ourselves through self-validation, we solve by attempting to invalidate others.

Anger often makes us feel powerful, thanks to the production of epinephrine, also known as adrenaline. It raises our cardiac output and raises blood glucose levels. This helps us to address our deepest doubts about ourselves. It is little wonder that it can end up controlling us. The psychoanalytic and Freudian point of view saw that anger was frequently turned inward. Freud thought that was what depression really was, but he was less forthcoming about the sources of anger. However, he thought that aggression was an inbuilt drive. He referred to it as Thanatos, sometimes called the ‘death instinct’. It can be turned inwards, and leads in extremis to suicide, or outward to repel something that is perceived as a threat to our self.

In Jung’s “The Phenomenology of the Self” he highlighted “the shadow”, which is the unknown and dark side of one’s personality. This part of ourselves is instinctive, irrational and primitive. Its impulses are lust, power, greed, envy, rage and of course, anger. He believed that psychological health was what was achieved when one could recognize and integrate the shadow aspect of our self. In other words, living with anger, understanding it has a value, but not being subject to it, is one outcome of individuation, on the road to self-actualisation, which is the process of being our best self. Anger is often the catalyst for great deeds. As any sportsman or woman would highlight, the “I’ll show you” response to a non-selection, or a journalist’s criticism, can often be very powerfully used as a positive motivator.

So, I started this sensing that we are in an angrier place, with collective anger levels turning up. If that is true, it can lead to poor outcomes and that was my initial concern. Now, I am thinking more about the importance of anger, and also that anger expressed is often preferable to anger repressed. I think about protests in the streets, and I think about people I know, some of whom are perceived as ‘angry’ and others whose almost unnatural calm, means I am starting to see them through fresh, slightly concerned, eyes. I think about my upbringing and about how I raised my children. Anger is both an intrinsic part of human nature and an asset to society when there is fighting to be done.

The questions are:

Are you angry? Angrier? And do you acknowledge it may come from a position of fear? Are we all angrier now? And is that a bad thing?

New normal and post-lockdown

Lockdown Journal: 13^thAugust, London

It feels odd, writing to the Lockdown Journal, when we feel so much less locked down, but a few treats over the past couple of weeks made me think about what London feels like now. We are coming to the end, we are told, of the heatwave. Temperatures have been in the thirties for a few days and the atmosphere is humid. There is nothing ‘new normal’ about these weather conditions, but what I have been thinking about is how London has adopted a ‘post lockdown’ modus operandi.

A fellow university student with me at Birkbeck, got her result, and was lamenting that she will not have a graduation ceremony. Given she achieved a First, I felt for her. But completing her degree seemed to be very much a ‘post-virus thing’, rather than a ‘pre-virus thing’ when she started. And neither she, nor I, are naïve enough to think we are definitely ‘post-virus’; but we note how the city is changing.

The country has ‘local lockdowns’, and today has been reminded that things are anything but normal nationally, by the attempt to grade A level students for the exams that they were not able to sit. Young people’s futures are being disrupted by an algorithm, and a Big Brother approach, that suggests deferring to the judgement of the teachers that actually taught these students would lead to favouritism and biases. Almost 40% of grades were downgraded from teacher predictions. The hapless Education Secretary has suggested that the government wants to avoid youngsters getting recruited for jobs for which they may not be qualified and for which they will not be able to develop the necessary ability. Yes, this country is the home of irony.

We have just revealed a shocking second quarter economic contraction which tells us about the depth of this recession. What we cannot know is what its duration is going to be, but it will be complicated by Brexit at the end of this year. The prevalence and progress of the coronavirus will be fundamental to duration, so it is unhelpful that the government is attempting to reclassify the death statistics, to paint itself in a better light. This dishonesty, allied to a diversionary media campaign focused on the plight of some luckless migrants, putting their lives at risk in the English Channel, gives little confidence in our leadership. How many of today’s A level school leavers will be voting Conservative in the next Election?

The revival of the economy depends on activity and on both people and cash moving around it. And that is what I have been noting recently, for what feels like ‘post lockdown London’. Movement. The highlight of my day and of the past few weeks, was the opportunity this morning to book some theatre tickets. I shall be going next month to The Bridge Theatre, where the seating capacity has been adapted for the audience to safely enjoy a performance and not to put anyone else’s health at risk. Just seeing some theatre would be great, but the thought that I shall see one of my all–time favourites, Kristen Scott Thomas, has made my joy all the greater.

This is not the first of my new experiences in recent days. Tonight, I am joining my daughter and her boyfriend at a wine bar near Elephant & Castle. We have a pre-booked time slot, and have a few criteria we need to meet, but this ‘normality’ will be very welcome. The proprietor of this bar business personally delivered a case of wines to me in early lockdown, as he strove to keep his business alive. I am delighted to be spending some money with him now, although and because, I suspect his business is under acute pressure.

Last night I walked from my Wapping home to Primrose Hill to meet a friend. We walked to the hilltop to view London. In its heat haze appearance, and with many people in the park, things felt ‘normal’. If one could not hear London’s beating heart, it was obvious that it was beating. We walked back towards Camden and decided to chance an open door at a small bistro-restaurant. Could we have a table for two? To my surprise, we could, if we could return the table after 75 minutes.

Not only did we have a lovely meal and a bottle of an amazing English rose wine, but the wine purchase was subsidised by the Chancellor’s scheme to revive the hospitality industry. Temped as I am to applaud his scheme and imagination, I am still troubled by relatively wealthy consumers, like me, having our meals subsidised, when food bank demand is hitting new peaks and the economy has shrunk by a fifth. I cannot deny, though, that I enjoyed how ‘normal’ the evening felt.

One conversation was about holidays and international travel. Her ex-husband had been working overseas until recently, and her business takes her to the Far East and to North America. We both noted the number of our friends who had managed to get away for an overseas holiday this month. I have friends returning from Spain, Poland, Lithuania and from France. The rhythm of life has clearly been affected, but less so general lifestyles.

In the past fortnight businesses like gyms have been able to reopen. I was able to meet my yoga teacher for the first 1:1 session since the early spring. Her normal studio is deemed too small to meet HSE criteria, so we now have a better space to work in, with a few interruptions for cleaning mats and surfaces. The gym itself, which is large and spread over three floors is clearly under tremendous cash pressure. Although memberships, which were suspended, are now operating again, which helps cash flow, I suspect that is more than absorbed by cleaning costs. There were more cleaning staff than clients in each of my two visits.

The other ‘new normal’ is the routine of supermarket shopping. I had become used to having to queue to enter. This was during the period before mandatory mask-wearing. Now, everyone is politely masked up, but the queues are a distant memory. I have become quickly used to the change in circumstance – I think I would probably be irritated now if I could not just stroll in at my convenience. In a few months’ time, perhaps I will feel the same about a Primrose Hill restaurant, rather than being joyfully surprised that we could eat there without having booked. Here’s to the new normality and to recoveries – economic, the arts and health statistics – this autumn.

On sporting heroics – a fan’s emotional investment

I spent my Saturday extremely indulgently. I barely moved from my armchair and I let the expert descriptions of the TMS-team paint the picture of an improbably and thrilling Test Match win. Despite a lack of physical activity, I enjoyed a day when my heart rate had plenty of opportunity to work harder. I expect I shared this with many other cricket-loving radio fans. My consciousness was suspended and my metabolic rate lowered, only when lunch and tea at Old Trafford allowed me a foray, somnambulistically, to the kitchen.

Non cricket lovers may not be aware of this, but most of the people who know me, are cricket lovers, so I felt that I might analyse what the win meant to me. This is not all about cricket, but it is largely about sport. England’s win would be attracting lots of descriptors like ‘remarkable’ and ‘improbable’, and even the voguish and perhaps-overused, ‘unprecedented’, save for the fact that about a year ago the same team did something perhaps even more improbable, when beating Australia at Headingley.

No matter. It was how I felt as the day wore on that I want to relive and to consider. I cannot think of a Test Match that I have not wanted England to win, in which they have played, so my joy at the shrinking of the target during the day was not exceptional. It is true that even a cricketer of my modest achievements understood that the vagaries of the pitch, combined with a brilliant and balanced Pakistani attack, meant winning was hugely unlikely. Wins from far behind, in any contest, especially sporting ones, are the most celebrated. The odds are genuinely defied.

For me, though, this was about the individuals who played the most significant part, that affected me particularly. Jos Buttler and Chris Woakes have already distinguished themselves on previous occasions wearing England’s colours. Both are Test Match centurions, yet for different reasons, neither is entirely sure of their place in the line up. Both have endured poor form lately, and for Buttler, whose father had just been taken ill, that poor form has extended to his wicket-keeping role. He may be an all-rounder but this is a role where specialisation, or lack of it, gets exposed and even he may think he is keeping better glovemen from the team. He had had a wretched match behind the stumps. Now he was in front of them. The pitch had some spite, the bowlers were quick, or the wiliest of wrist spinners, or metronomically accurate.

I wanted an England win, but I wanted Buttler to win it. He is one of the most naturally gifted players I have ever watched. I have never met him and I doubt that I ever shall, but his reputation is that he is a nice guy. Woakes, too, for that matter. But do nice guys win? Buttler’s predecessor, Johnny Bairstow, is almost as extravagantly talented and may have demonstrated more competence over a longer period with the keeping gloves. But a wretched run of form cost him his place. Bairstow is one of the most watchable players in English cricket, but I am a Buttler fan. I wanted the change and now, I wanted to be proved that my alliance with Jos was not a flawed choice. Somehow, I was emotionally invested. Sure, all the runs that were scored helped me get more excited about an unlikely England win, but I wanted this to be redemption time for my favourite player.

In the end, Woakes, who was unbeaten at the end and struck the winning boundary, made the biggest individual contribution, but Buttler, by dominating an attack that had reduced England to a desperate 117 for 5, was the catalyst for the win. When he struck a mammoth six with the victory reduced to tens of runs not a hundred plus, it felt like he had signalled the win. When he was dismissed, my heart sank, but I felt he had ‘done enough’.

A day later I thought about why it was important to me that one player should do particularly well. Cricket is a team game, but I rarely watch it without wishing one or two players better fortune than the rest, and occasionally I admit to wishing ill on some. Why? I don’t know the players personally, and they will never get an opportunity to show appreciation for my specific support and my attempt to generate good fortune for them. Psychoanalytically this is about identification and projection. Buttler is an ideal for me. He plays the game with a verve and impudence, but extreme skill, that is way beyond the game I played. Other lesser players represent the stodginess and ineptitude of my game. I project my weaknesses into them and come to hate them for not being an ideal, and for them reminding me of my flaws. My apologies to Mr Denly, a good player, but one I wished to see dropped. England has had a succession of opening batsmen over the past decade and I seize analyses of their shortcomings rather than admire their bravery and technique in the most challenging of environments.

I thought about this player identification in other contexts. I am a long-suffering West Ham fan. The current squad includes a mercurial and gifted player from Brazil, Felipe Anderson. I have seen very few players wear the Irons’s claret and blue kit, and display such natural gifts. His ball control and trickery, his balance and his acceleration, are all wonders to me. In the recent past only one other import from the European leagues, Dmitri Payet, has shown similar gifts. When I was growing up, perhaps Alan Devonshire could be mentioned in a similar breath, but nobody else. My favourite player of all time, Sir Trevor Brooking, was classy, strong and exceptional, but somehow seemed less extraordinarily gifted that Anderson.

My assessment of this player’s gifts, is a minority view. The point about Anderson is that I watch my beloved Hammers and hope for a win. It had been quite rare, pre-lockdown. But I hope to see Anderson play, and when he does, that he will be the matchwinner. The reason I write “when he does” is because he is no longer a first choice. Most of the crowd have lost faith in him and the twittersphere is alive with much more contempt, than praise, for him after every game – and that is from Hammers’ fans, rather than opposition club fans. It should not matter to me who makes the difference for my team, merely that someone does and the win is achieved. But matter it does.

Image result for coe and ovett — Coe and Ovett

Based on a small sample and extrapolating wildly, I would say we all have favourites and we rarely can explain why. When I was school age, Britain was blessed with the cream of middle distance running. But could I bathe in the glories of each athlete? No. I was an ‘Ovett man’ whereas many of my peers were ‘Coe men’. But Steve Ovett and Sebastian Coe were world class and ran for my country. How did I fail not to treat their triumphs alike? It is not even about their background or family or race.

A few years ago I was at Wimbledon watching the Ladies Semi-Finals. Serena Williams was playing her sister, Venus. I had no obvious emotional investment, or so I thought, but I found myself willing Venus to overcome her younger sister. It is possible that because I had a brilliantly-talented, sporting, younger sibling, that I wanted Venus to win. It may have been simply that she represented gazelle-like grace, against her sister’s more brutish physical strength, but whatever the reason I took sides. Serena won. I think most people I know have strong feelings about Roger Federer. My mother is one. Whoever is the other side of the net, is the ‘bad guy’. I can even do it with golfers – I am a long-standing fan of the English duo Justin Rose and Paul Casey. Why? Not sure.

And athletes can move categories. When great players reach the twilight of their careers, I am quite likely to will them to victory, despite having willed their defeats earlier in their career. I never was a great fan of John McEnroe, despite his outrageous gifts and entertainment value, but I became a fan as his career wound down. At the other end of the age scale, most supporters are like me in wanting a new face to do well. When a football team introduces a teenage talent, I find myself thinking that whatever the outcome I want him or her to play well. I am identifying with a fear of the negative – don’t make a mistake, do well enough to play the next game – that they probably do not feel. No doubt, though, that watching a teenage Michael Owen, was something I cared about at the time.

It is a little strange, but must be why television competitions are so compelling. We don’t care whether people we don’t know personally are baking off, dancing off or something else off on a Love Island, merely that we can get a vicarious kick from how they do. And because it is about personal identification, we can debate it with friends and family with a remarkable level of vehemence. It just so happens that Buttler has the role my brother, Neil, held professionally for three different county sides. I am not sure what he thinks, and I know he is more qualified to comment, but I will debate the composition of the England side and the position of wicketkeeper with him and anyone else who does not share my view. Passionately! Neil is a Hammers fan too, and he probably would not pick my man, Felipe.

I have not answered my question to myself, about why I get emotionally invested in individual players. My experience, though, is that this is quite common. I think it may be about an idealised self and our need to aspire to something better than we are, but I could be way off-beam. I welcome anyone else’s views on how sport affects their emotions and to what extent it is harnessed to individual players/athletes. It is not all about excellence – I wonder how many of my peers celebrated Daley Thompson, or Ian Botham, or Paul Gascoigne or had other favourites at the time these giants played?

Jack Charlton – a great

Jack Charlton dead: England World Cup winner and Leeds legend dies ...

Sports and other journalists are writing about the death of Jack Charlton. A highly effective footballer, a brilliant football manager, apparently all round good guy, and one of my favourite TV interviewees for the times he said “our Bobby” when talking about his fellow World Cup winning brother and future knight of the realm.

I am a Hammer, and for much of my upbringing, Leeds United, for whom Jack Charlton was a linchpin, was the team I loathed. They won too often; certainly, compared with my team. Their football could be graceless and violent, and yet it could be fabulous and spellbinding. In short, they were frequently just too good. Masterminded by Don Revie, they should have won more than they did.

Charlton was a giant in that team and not just physically. He commanded respect on and off the field. As a Hammer, it is my great embarrassment and shame that though I saw the great Booby Moore play in claret and blue, I cannot really remember it.

I do, however, recall seeing Charlton play. In 1972, I was in the directors’ box at Leeds, as my father had a connection with the chairman, to watch them play Norwich City. I remember being excited by the energy and ball skills of Norwich’s Jimmy Bone, but above all by the ruthless efficiency of the Leeds team as they won easily. The score was 2-0, but they won easily and it could have been a much more emphatic scoreline. Charlton scored the second. It was one of his final goals for Leeds. He scored over 60 times for them, 50 in the league, and had a scoring rate of around a goal every nine appearances. Not bad for a ‘stopper’.

We were invited to Leeds for one other game that season. To see my beloved Hammers. Moore against Charlton. I only had eyes for Trevor Brooking, but neither he, nor any of the Hammers’ attacking talents had much opportunity to show off that day. Despite Moore’s presence Leeds won 1-0. I remember the disappointment of barely seeing the Hammers threaten the opposing goal. Charlton was one of the major problems.

BREAKING: World Cup winner and former Rep Of Ireland boss Jack ...

He said, on interview, that he could not really play football. He could stop other people playing. “Now, our Bobby, he could play…”. But he was more than a stopper, and alongside the steeliness of Norman Hunter for his club team, and the silky dispossession skills of Moore for the international team, he was a perfect foil. His adaptability was to be the signal for his great second act as a club, and even more successfully, international, football manager.

He took the Republic of Ireland into the European Championships and then remarkably, two years later, into the quarter finals of the World Cup. They were not pretty, but they were pretty bloody good. A bit like the Leeds teams in which he had been so critical.

Some little while ago I wrote a short blog piece about what the passing of the great Gordon Banks meant to me. England’s World Cup winners are few in number now. When they hit football’s summit I had just turned two. I have plenty of football heroes, and any Hammer would include Moore, Peters and Hurst, but most of mine were more modern and as internationals, less successful.

What Jack Charlton represented to me, and I believe to many others, was the personification of making the best of what talent you have. His brother is amongst England’s all time greatest, but Jack reached the same summit and then extended his footballing acuity into inspiring other slightly less gifted players into producing their best on the biggest stage. He had a race horse trainer’s ability to bring his players to peak on the right occasion. It was no surprise to me that the turf and fishing were important to him. He was in tune with nature and the elements

Jack Charlton: England 1966 World Cup hero dies at 85 | UK News ...

His death has made me think about stretching talent to its extremes and about applying the wisdom of experience. My Second Innings gives me the opportunity to work with people’s perceptions of themselves. My brother is a coach and mentor. We both get to see the potential in others and to see if we can help develop it. Jack Charlton exemplified that, done well. There is something especially English about Jack, standing tall, honest enough to acknowledge the limitations of his game, but dovetailing perfectly with the best around him and converting it all to being a winner. A winner, yet humble. We could do with a little more of that for today’s challenges, sporting, societal and political.

On humanistic approaches to differences in individual personalities

The humanistic approach to Individual Differences (IDs) is the study of human behaviours. It eschews the environment or unconscious drives. It is based on the European tradition of existential philosophy, which is concerned with ontology – the science of being. Therefore, it is phenomenological. Its greatest exponents are George Kelly and Carl Rogers. Rogers’s work built on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, with particular reference to the drive for self-actualisation. By contrast IDs defined by the psychometric approach are data-driven. They are measurable, typically by the technique of Factor Analysis. They embrace trait theories made famous by Cattell, Eysenck, Costa and McCrae, who developed the ‘Big 5’.

George Kelly’s cognitive theory was that individuals operated like scientists. They make observations to formulate rules. Humanistic approaches suggest that individuals interpret the same circumstance in different ways. Everyone classifies elements (people and objects) using ‘personal constructs’. Imagine a person with a face tattoo. Threatening, or artistically and culturally aware? To understand how these constructs were related, he devised the Repertory Grid Technique. This is a grid of constructs with an extreme at each end of the construct range, and is how we come to understand ‘the self’. The grid is then populated on a 1-5 scoring system.

Detailed grids and sophisticated analysis gave birth to Cattell’s factor analysis, as Kelly identified patterns of similarities between elements and constructs. It is still used in clinical and occupational psychology but has become unfashionable because of its dependence on language. None of us interprets words in exactly the same way. Furthermore, it has erratic predictive ability and is a poor comparator. It is difficult to research empirically. The theory is not falsifiable. It is derided for being overly mechanistic, as individuals defy ‘machine-like’ categorisation. It is ideographic, whereas nomothetic approaches which use data that can be categorised, are deemed more effective.

Kelly’s Personal Construct Theory has been superseded by Rogers’s ‘Person Centred Theory’, as the dominant humanistic approach. Rogers focused on the meanings of feelings. A clinical psychologist by training he developed his theories over forty years from the 1940’s. The critical component is the concept of ‘self’, and why people generally comment, “I am not myself today”. Knowing one’s true self is about not behaving as peers think one ought to behave, but to be self-aware. An individual has to have an ‘unconditional positive regard’. This is akin to the watering and nurturing of a plant to enable its growth. They seek self-actualisation, which is the peak of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

The difficulty is measuring the attitudes to self, which tend to be done via clinical interviews. In 1953 Stephenson developed Q-sort, in which the individual sorts a pile of cards into five piles ranging from most, to least like his or her self. Over several sessions changes in selections are monitored. Rogers was looking for ‘congruence’ which is when the elements of different selves overlap. When the real self and the ‘ideal self’ overlap, it leads to self-actualisation. Alternative measurement comes using the Rosenberg self-esteem scale. Rogers’s theory is difficult to evaluate. A criticism is the dependence on self-reporting. Furthermore, it evolved from his own clinical work and lacks empirical data. The ambiguity of terms like ‘self-actualisation’ and ‘congruence’ make the theory impossible to falsify.

The psychometric approaches (data collection and statistical analysis) to IDs overcome criticisms of empirical weakness and unfalsifiable theories. They measure types and traits. Trait theories suggest people have repeating, common behaviours and show stability across situations. It shifts the focus from each person’s phenomenological world to examining whether behaviour is not situational, but influenced by facets of character. The ways in which people differ are ‘dimensions’ and these are measured. Measurement (metric) is what gives these approaches a collective name. It gives access to differences between and within individuals, and allows accurate comparators, which are critical for predictive ability.

In 1957 Raymond Cattell reduced 4500 adjectives (Allport and Odbert, 1936) to 46, then by using factor analysis, he identified 23 factors amid the trait descriptors. His subsequent tests for measuring Personality include the best-known 16PF (Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaires), the first statistical analysis of factors defining ‘source traits’. Each trait is given an adjective describing the extreme eg suspicious and trusting. Adjectives led to the theory being known as the ‘lexical approach’. As computer power advanced it showed that few of Cattell’s factors replicated across large samples. A problem of reliability.

By contrast to Cattell’s bottom up approach Hans Eysenck advocated a more top-down view after fifty years of investigating the main aspects of Personality (Dimensions of Personality, 1947). He strongly believed personality was hereditary. He explored the place on a spectrum an individual held between introversion and extraversion, neuroticism and emotional stability and from a later date, psychoticism and tender-mindedness. It is known as the 3-Factor Theory, measuring ability, temperament and the dynamic. Using scales, he measured the three dimensions eg Maudsley Medical Questionnaire (MMQ) and Eysenck Personality Inventory (EPI). His work on biological influences has catalysed lots of iterative research. Critics of his work (Conley, 1984 and Michel, 1968) suggest that it is situation, not traits, that determine behaviour.

Traits suggest that personality sits somewhere on a continuum. Costa and McCrae (2003) defined five supertraits that make up the basic structure of personality: Openness to new experiences, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism. This theory is hierarchical with many subordinate traits. By contrast ‘type’ theories are about placing individuals in categories. The most famous application of psychometrics devoted to ‘type’ is the work of Myers-Briggs, which is founded on the ideas of psychoanalyst Carl Jung. The theory is based on the idea of two mental processes: Information in and Decisions out. It also incorporates the view that processes can be shaped by environment thus accommodating both nature and nurture drivers. The types are extraverts and introverts, sensing or intuitive, thinking versus feeling, and judgemental or perceptive.

In summary, the humanistic approaches to IDs suffer from a lack of empirical evidence. The theories are difficult to falsify and much of the research is undermined by issues of linguistics or self-reporting biases. Psychometric approaches largely solve issues of language and empirical evidence but are vulnerable to issues of reliability, of validity and are subject to both random and systematic errors of measurement. Traits may be stable, but age and experience may modify them.

On reading ‘Beloved’

In the first week of January I was flying home from a short break in the States. One of the in-flight movie selections was a documentary about Toni Morrison. I listened with awe, not just at her extraordinary life of survival, but at her capacity to express it, verbally and on the page. I noted the Pulitzer and that she was a Nobel laureate. She also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In short, a literary giant. And, I had not read a word of her’s.

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And so, eyes dancing between Baldwin, Michelle Obama and ‘Beloved’, I knew it was time for a little Toni Morrison. And, I am still recovering from the emotional punch. For those, like me, to whom this is unfamiliar, it tells the story of an escaped slave girl just after the Civil War, in Ohio in the 1870’s. She has escaped her persecutors, but is now persecuting herself as she realises that she cannot escape her past.

Plenty of the novel is harrowing, even when it is being utterly compelling. What really affected me was to learn subsequently that Morrison based it on a true account. The protagonist, Sethe, having been raped whilst pregnant, and whipped so badly that her back is decorated with open wounds and scars that resemble a tree with many branches, has managed to cross the Ohio River. She is seeking refuge with the mother of her partner, who has had her freedom bought by the son’s sacrifice of his own liberty.

Three of her children have gone ahead. She is heavily pregnant. Her partner never arrives. As she makes her way, she gives birth to her youngest with the help of a white girl, Amy. She makes it to 124, the place where ‘Baby Suggs’, the freed grandmother to her new baby, is now retired and preaching, to join her other children, a two year old girl and two boys. All seems well until her brutal owner tracks them down and comes with accomplices to reclaim his human property. What then follows is the act upon which the tale hangs.

It will be revisited but we spend much of the rest of the novel in a time eighteen years hence. Sethe is living with her surviving baby daughter, Denver. They live in the house “124”, that had been home to Denver’s grandmother, Baby Suggs, who is now dead. The house, once a happy refuge for escaping slaves, is now haunted by Denver’s dead sister. Sethe had managed a headstone for her grave. She could not afford ‘Dearly beloved’ which she had heard in church, and so, paying with her body, she has a stone memorialising ‘Beloved’. Beloved is the spirit haunting them.

Paul D had been a slave at ‘Sweet Home’, where Sethe had worked and been abused and had partnered with Halle, Denver’s father. After eighteen years he has found her and we learn that he had always carried an image of her in his mind and always felt that she was the girl he would and could love. His own experiences have been brutalising and harsh, including the lynching that took place at the time of her escape. He manages to exorcise the ghost at 124, and to persuade a highly sceptical Denver that they could all live together as a family, after a successful social outing.

On their return they are greeted by a remarkable young woman, with no knowledge of her own history, and remarkably unmarked and unlined skin and hands. She cannot account for her new and good footwear. Sethe takes her in, but Paul D is bothered by her presence. We come to know her as ‘Beloved’ and we have to suspend our disbelief. She is a very physical presence, but is clearly a manifestation of the adult that the baby spirit who had haunted 124, would have grown into. Denver is convinced she is her sister, and Sethe comes to see her as the dead daughter. Paul D is too unsettled. He loses a battle of wills with the new arrival and leaves.

As time passes Beloved, little more than waif and stray, grows fat. She feeds on Sethe’s pain and as the older woman declines in physical health, the young woman thrives but becomes more demanding. Sethe refers to her sexual abuse at ‘Sweet Home’ and how they “took my milk”. Beloved takes her milk, metaphorically, at the end of the story. Denver breaks from the claustrophobic household and attempts to engage with the world outside the house. She is on the point of succeeding when the dreadful denouement plays out. Paul D has returned to the area, and Stamp Paid has told him about the dark past that is associated with the house. He shows him a newspaper cutting but Paul D cannot read.

Nonetheless his reaction sears itself on the reader’s memory. It shouts out the differences between the oppressed and what we are coming to understand and weigh as ‘white privilege’. He is alarmed by the picture on the old newspaper cutting because “there was no way in hell a black face could appear in a newspaper if the story was about something anybody wanted to hear”.

We learn that when the ‘Schoolteacher’, the sadistic slave owner, had come for Sethe and her children, she had attempted to kill them all rather than have them returned to slavery. The boys were injured and subsequently ran away. The two year old was killed by use of a saw blade on her throat. Sethe was about to dash the baby’s brains out by swinging her against a wall, when the elderly black, Stamp Paid, grabbed the baby.

The novel is like an extended exam course for psychotherapists. It obviously deals with trauma, but also projection, through ‘Beloved’s’ arrival, and the significance of the maternal tie. It introduces the need and the problems with ‘othering’, both in skin colour and gender. It damns a sinner and gives her no redemption, and it explores the problem of repressed memory and how the unconscious forces its needs and drives into the conscious world. Morrison creates a verb – to ‘rememory’.

Brutalising experiences have caused the repression of memory. They cannot be simply remembered. However, the magic of the verb is we understand that Sethe is recovering a memory, rather than simply remembering. And, she is not sure she wants to recover it. We see the intrusion of the past into the present, which is the foundation for most people’s needs to have therapy or analysis – to break out of ‘stuckness’ and to stop recurring cycles of behaviour. We see this through the device of the supernatural, and the character of Beloved.

Sethe’s pain is exquisitely but agonisingly portrayed. Any part of her true self could be used. It could be her body, her offspring, her love and as she understands, even her mind. To her the whites could “not just work, kill or maim you, but dirty you.” It creates the madness that allows her to contemplate and execute infanticide. “Dirty you so bad you couldn’t like yourself anymore. Dirty you so bad you forgot who you were”. She can see only one solution, “she could never let it happen to her own. The best thing she was, was her children.” As Stamp Paid tells Paul D when he finally accepts what had happened at ‘124’ and what Sethe had done to her daughter, “she ain’t crazy. She love those children. She was trying to out hurt the hurter”.

Reading ‘Beloved’ is to get ready for some emotional bruising, and to shudder that this was not an implausible tale, nor were several of its worst elements uncommon. It chills me to recall that it was based on a true story. I am very glad, after all this time, that I have read it and discovered Toni Morrison’s work.

On rediscovering a love for chess

Lockdown and the tragic progress of the transmission of the virus have spoiled and challenged many pastimes. There are exceptions, though. One ray of sunshine through my clouds, has been a rediscovery of the game of chess. Fortunately, one does not need to be a strong chess player to appreciate and enjoy it. It reminds me of my golfing efforts. However much I shanked and sliced, I still could enjoy one clean strike and the beauty of the course and the company of fellow golfers. In chess, however weak my game, I can take pleasure in laying a trap and in spotting a strategic move from my opponent.

My opponent is my son. When lockdown first appeared on the horizon and he was already self-isolating, I was a little concerned for his mental health. I suggested family ‘zoom’ calls so that he actually had faces to see, as well as voices to hear, in keeping up some social interaction. But daily calls, or even weekly zooms, can become tiresome when there is not much to talk about other than exercise regimes and food preparation. Whilst I thought about what could give our conversation some particular focus I suggested we try and play chess against one another. There had to be plenty of online options for us. Indeed, there are. We have settled into competing via the digital boards of chess.com and we have now played over fifty, almost daily, games.

Sometimes described as “the gymnasium of the mind”, the chess board is incredibly democratising and equitable. Nothing about one’s creed, one’s social class, one’s ethnicity, or physicality, limits one player’s potential compared with his or her opponent’s. I like that the game is not about intellect, or memory, although both help. It requires other skills, especially spatial awareness. My son is a stronger player than me, but as we push on towards sixty games I am just four behind. It feels like an unbridgeable gulf, but I still have my moments of success.

The computer gives the players an ‘accuracy’ score, which seems to be based on the correlation between your moves and what the computer would have chosen as the ‘optimised’ move. I regularly crash to scores in the 20’s and 30’s but I have played a small handful of near perfect games with 90+ scores. It is extraordinary the effect these scores have on me – it is like getting a high mark and a compliment from a particularly demanding teacher. Am I regressing to childhood Ian?

The best of our newfound, rediscovered love is that we have an immediate post-match phone call to review the game. It began with the victor’s opportunity to crow, but soon we found ourselves fascinated by the way the game had developed and discussing began strategies. “I knew you wanted to do that, so I blocked it with…” As my three children move into early adulthood and look at the world of post university employment, and establish romantic partnerships, I think often about parenting and what we did well or badly. Although I am in no hurry to become a grandparent, I find myself thinking about what I will do for my grandchildren as they grow up.

One of the best things I did as a parent was to introduce chess. I hope I shall be across the board from a grandchild, one day. I repeat that I am, and always have been, a poor player. I did little more than teach my children the moves for each piece. Home computing was still moving through its infancy and we had a CD-ROM that encouraged young chess players using a couple of cartoon animals. I cannot recall their names but one may have been ‘Chester’.

The children were soon absorbing the lessons and our games became more testing for me. Although we have gone years without playing, it gave us a special connection, as their mother did not play. One of the highlights of this week has been persuading #2 daughter to join chess.com and give us the potential for a round robin contest. She has not played in years, but almost beat me. I think my family rank will soon be lowest.

I tried to recall how I learned the game. I think it was because of the interest of the two boys who lived next door. I do not remember being taught by my parents, so my brother and I must have learned from friends, or at school. I have a vague recollection of attending a chess club at the local community centre.

When we were young boys, my brother and I were taken to meet a great uncle who owned a toy shop. We were able to choose anything in the shop as a gift. I chose two football statuettes in plastic – one of Bobby Moore and one of Billy Bremner. Moore is an obvious choice to a Hammer like me, but Bremner? I think it was because they were respectively, captains of England and Scotland. Not much utility in the gift, but fortunately my brother chose a chess set. We had many games, including a few that ended in tantrums and boards overturned and pieces strewn everywhere to avoid conceding a defeat!

I stopped playing against our neighbours and my brother and in any school club in my mid-teens. I cannot recall why, but probably because it was “not cool”. I did not pick up any interest in it again until the early ‘90’s when Nigel Short, England’s strongest player, reached #3 in the world and earned the right for a match with world champion Garry Kasparov. The match is covered brilliantly in a book by Dominic Lawson, who was in the Short support team, called “Inner Game”. What is fascinating is the physiological strain Short went through during the contest. Freudian thinkers appreciate that the mind and body are one and that the body often expresses the strains of the psyche, but this book explores that forensically.

Short was battered. After seven games, he was 5 ½ – 1 ½ down. He did not win a game until the sixteenth. The mental bruising and the supremacy that Kasparov gave out, and the mercilessness with which he persisted, make the reader wince. Relentless. Almost torturing. I was reminded of it only recently when a friend was amused by how excitedly I was looking forward to my daily match, because I had got back to within two of my son. She recommended that I watch “Pawn Sacrifice” on i-player.

This is the dramatization of an even more significant world title match, when Bobby Fisher, the maverick American talent, took on champion Boris Spassky, in a match overloaded with Cold War significance and power. Fisher eschews conventional moves and in the now famous game 6, dazzled Spassky to such an extent that his opponent applauded. It turned the match and Fisher recorded a remarkable win. Unfortunately, it strained his already fragile mental health, and is a good example of how these mental athletes push themselves in ways we more easily recognise in physical Olympians.

So, what is it that makes it such a compelling game? We know that it is because of the extraordinary number of moves that a sixteen piece, 64 space board, can conjure, but it is clearly something more profound than that. Marcel Duchamp may be the person who best understands this. He said “I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists”. I think there is something in this. Chess allows the player to express his or her creativity.

Einstein had a view of the control the game itself exerts, which was what ultimately destroyed Fisher. He said, “chess holds its master in its own bonds, shackling the mind and brain so that the inner freedom of the very strongest must suffer”. Russian grandmaster and undisputed world champion from 2006-7, Victor Kramnik, thought that the game could reveal the very self of a player, the true personality, “I am convinced, the way one plays chess always reflects the player’s personality. If something defines his character, then it will also define his way of playing”.

What I love about it is the sense that becoming a better player is open to all. Playing is the only real education. Jose Raul Capablanca noted that “you may learn much more from a game you lose than from a game you win. You will have to lose hundreds of games before becoming a good player”. I think, there is something of a metaphor for life there. Something Kiplingesque about treating the twin imposters the same.

To conclude, “those who say they understand chess, understand nothing” (Hubner) and “one bad move nullifies forty good ones” (Horwitz), has helped me realise that chess is representative of the game of Life. We are always learning, and it keeps us humble. Now, I must not let him pick me off with those knights again today!

Lockdown Journal contribution – 12 June

I had a longish walk today from Limehouse Basin, along the canal and into Highbury, Hackney and Homerton, before returning to Limehouse via the Lea Valley and Bow Docks. Despite half of my family being east Londoners much of this was new territory to me. Whilst I walked and took a couple of pictures, I thought about feelings, both physical and emotional.

Uppermost in my mind was ‘fatigue’. I walked about 20km which is far from unusual for me in this lockdown phase, and far from taxing, but I noticed that I was quite tired as I approached my home. But it is mental fatigue and lockdown fatigue that I found myself considering.

For good reasons our news coverage is now highlighting issues around Black Lives Matter protests, a number of sensitivities around the lives of trans men and women, and the return of Premier League football. The issue of the merits and demerits of many public statues and monuments is getting more attention than the daily virus-attributed deaths, even though they are still in treble figures.

It suits the government, but is it partly to do with fatigue? Are we all a little tired of talking about ‘essential worker heroism’? Are we tired of ‘staying alert’ and ‘saving lives’? Are we tired of believing that anyone is ‘following the science’? We certainly seem tired of holding our government to account. There is little evidence that the virus is being contained, but we get boosterish headlines about reducing the 2m distancing rules and about a reopening of parts of the hospitality industry.

I wonder if we are all just a little too tired to think in the ways we thought just three months ago. Essential workers just seem to be low paid workers, once more. Antagonisms about race and about ‘free speech’, and old debates over so called ‘political correctness’ are regaining oxygen. Three months ago, we were talking about ‘Be Kind’ social media messaging and about being grateful to front line worker heroes.

I sense a pervasive feeling of weariness. I hope that is wrong. We know that we have much more to do as a society to contain the virus and to rebuild a shattered economy. That will need strong leadership and a community spirit and a willingness to come together. It requires energy, invigoration and fresh thinking. I hope that protesters protest; that opposition parties hold the government to account; that citizens remember the bravery of front line workers, including the police, which is getting rather maligned currently and that we all behave wisely, so that the NHS does not get overwhelmed by any prospective ‘second spike’. I hope, but I am sceptical. Or just fatigued.