“Rise and shine… it’s a glorious new Britain,” says the Daily Express. Having just been out for a run, I’d say it was dull and chilly and the same old Britain, although the sun did shine briefly.
Running generates thoughts as well as sweat. God, didn’t I used to be fitter than this was one. Another was inspired by the loss of Terry Jones – “He’s not the prime minister, he’s a very naughty boy.” That cheered me up for a moment.
I was also thinking about TS Eliot, not in a deep way or anything. It was Boris Johnson blathering on about Brexit not being an end but a beginning.
No, it’s an end and a beginning, as are most things and all days. There’s not a lot more to say, as everything else is hopeful hot air or pointless moaning. Not that I’m against a pointless moan; pointless moaning got me where I am today, you might say. But I am against all that hopeful hot air.
As my feet hit the pavement, and the pavement hit my feet back, I thought yes, that’s The Waste Land, isn’t it, all that in our end is our beginning stuff?
Back home I pick up the Collected Poems (1909-1962). University days for me spanned 1975 to 1978, so this book with its browning pages and brittle strips of sticky tape as improvised binding was bought two or three years after we joined EEC, as it then was.
Turns out it isn’t the Waste Land, with its famous opening line, “April is the cruellest month…”, always handy for teasing my wife, whose birthday falls in that month. Anyway, February seems crueller this year.
It’s The Four Quartets where the beginnings and endings overlap. The phrase “In my beginning is my end” repeats throughout and wraps up the poems, too.
Before that closing line, you will find: “The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters/Of the petrel and the porpoise.”
Well, no, me neither or not ‘now me’. Young me drew a red biro arrow from petrel to the scrawled words, “Any kind of genus Procellaria – akin to albatrosses and fulmars – so there!”
How strange to read notes scribbled when young and understanding of nothing much; and to read them again when old and understand of nothing much and wonder at how smart you were then.
As for the headlines today, I like best that on the front of the Guardian: “The day we said goodbye.” Simple, sorrowful and to the point. The Sun’s “MAKE LEAVE… NOT WAR” seems one weak pun to many, as is often the case in that paper nowadays.
The Daily Mail leads off on the coronavirus, but hilariously gets in on the tea towel act – “WE’RE OUT! FREE* BREXIT TEA TOWEL”. *£2.50 P&P required… while stocks last…”
First the Tories now the Daily Mail – what is it with the tea towels? Those who wished and wheedled for Brexit now own it. If it’s a success, they have permission to gloat; if it’s not, I will be bringing out my own tea towel bearing the words “You made this mess…”
Putting TS Eliot back on the shelf now, to sit with all those other university books with notes scribbled in the margin by a bright boy I once knew.