Nothing makes me feel decrepit and obsolete quite as much as when friends of my children make television programmes. That used to be my business, but now it’s theirs. Simon Finch, a friend of our family since for ever, has just done a documentary called The Good Terrorist, which is one of the best summaries I have seen about what took so long to happen in South Africa. It deals with the trial and execution of the only white man who managed to convince himself that planting a bomb in a Johannesburg station would be a dramatic blow against the oppressive white government. Finch argues the rights and wrongs with great subtlety for someone I first met when he had only recently graduated. At the same age, I myself had rarely demonstrated any subtlety at all.
On a similar time scale, my elder daughter was at university with the brilliant Sally Phillips, who later became one of the all-star cast of Smack The Pony, a show I watched in awe of its precocious maturity and accomplishment. Just lately, she wrote and narrated a documentary about the possibility that we are on the verge of eliminating Down’s syndrome. One of her children has that condition, and radiates so much happiness and sanity that I was continually reminded of what a misery guts I have been at various times of my life. I’m surprised I’m not more of wet weekend now, when I can hear the clock ticking all night: but it would be churlish to complain, and anyway there is too much to do.
Just keeping up with the very much younger set would be enough to keep me busy. Recently, my granddaughter’s 11th birthday was celebrated at a sedate tea party: all adults except for her, and some of us of advanced age. I must say she behaved with the cool poise of Grace Kelly turning 21. But is cool poise what we want from someone who makes it so clear that she prefers to spend most of her time turning cartwheels? Happily, elsewhere and on another occasion, with all present no older than she, mayhem took place. The whole thing would have been high on the Richter scale. Luckily, I wasn’t there, and in times to come I’ll be there even less. “They crowd us from the world,” said Pushkin about children.
Not that Pushkin was ever a model of precocious sanity. He should never have fought that duel with one of the biggest idiots in Europe, who spent the rest of his worthless life boasting about how he had killed the great poet. Duelling was childish, like having too much party and running around shouting. Adults learn better, given time.
Clive James: ‘I am continually reminded of what a misery guts I have been’
Hiç yorum yok:
Yorum Gönder