Football

As I said in the last blog, you can use anything at all as a metaphor for life. For instance, a banana. A banana is like life. The inner curve, the sweep of time from youth to death, the skin mottling from green to black, full of vitality (potassium and selenium), but destined, as are we all for the compost heap. Amen.

I am trying to bring together my class notes, laughingly known in the trade as "preparation". This I am doing in order to print a book to be able to give to the students and their parents.

So far, I have finished the cover and a bit more.

English speaking countries

  Any road up, football is the metaphor for today. Conceivably you might be able to play football on your own if you pretended to be 22 people and you could run backwards and forwards without getting too exhausted. But, let´s face it, life is pretty much a team game unless you are happy being a miserable old git railing against anything and everything. Not much fun.

Buddleia

An old Rocker

Another old Rocker

A young swinger

Today's metaphor

Next to the gym where I do kung fu

Life is treating me well. Today has been a stunningly beautiful day. The sun has blasted down pretending to be mid-August and the birds have been conscientiously doing their choir practice. The garden is forgiving but rampant.

If life is a game of football that doesn't depend solely on yourself then it would be wise to adopt your strategy accordingly. It seems to me that in football, as in all sports, there is one skill that serves well. The ability to move from a state of relaxation to one of tension, both muscular and mental, in an instant. The sudden change throws one's opponents into panic. In football it is the manager's job to inculcate this strategy in the team. In practice this is too difficult and it is the players themselves that instinctively weave between the extremes of tension.

A selfy

Sluice

To the mill

We lost 3-2 yesterday, after winning for about 70 minutes 1-0. I don't care too much given that middle-aged blokes like me don't usually play football.

It would be nice to stay fit and take Jacky skiing though!!

The loveliest footballer in the whole world

A view from the garden this morning

Today's poem:

Now, God be thanked Who has watched us with His hour, 
And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping, 
With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power, 
To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping, 
Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary, 
Leave the sick hearts that honour could not move, 
And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary, 
And all the little emptiness of love! 

Oh! we, who have known shame, we have found release there,
Where there's no ill, no grief, but sleep has mending, 
Naught broken save this body, lost but breath; 
Nothing to shake the laughing heart's long peace there 
But only agony, and that has ending; 
And the worst friend and enemy is but Death. 

Horty; Rhymes with sporty

There must be a million metaphors for life. The two best ones are gardens and boats. The garden is looking luscious but I haven't got a boat. So, when somebody says, "Get a life!" what they mean is, get a boat.

A Spanish oak In the Corner of the Garden

Just bought a Barbecue

Shaping up

Fig Tree

 At the moment the figs are falling off the tree because they are so engorged with sugar. They are simply delicious. Plucking a fruity caramel cream off the branches gives pause for thought.

Grape vines

Cranberry

The Merits of Radical Pruning

Let's stretch the metaphor! Roses are pretty, some of them even smell delicious but you have to be careful with those thorns as Rachel Ward once told Richard Chamberlain. What they benefit from is a good hacking and plenty of well-worked, weed free soil. Just like people.

Cut my arms and legs off and then cover me in mud!

Christmas is coming early

Not Sure What this is; Any Ideas?

Grape

When reading about Waterloo writers are not referring to the fruit when they talk about grape. What they mean is buckshot, hundreds of tiny lead projectiles. I prefer the fermentable variety.

A view of the house from the garden

Gradually getting lusher

In fact, I would rather like to be a lush.

Marta looking confused

Pumpkins on the porch

A wooden tardis

Florid

I am slightly deflated. It is Thursday the second of October and I have been back to work for two days. And I'm not as old as I used to be.

All is well.

Today's poem:

Now as the train bears west,
Its rhythm rocks the earth,
And from my Pullman berth
I stare into the night
While others take their rest.
Bridges of iron lace,
A suddenness of trees,
A lap of mountain mist
All cross my line of sight,
Then a bleak wasted place,
And a lake below my knees.
Full on my neck I feel
The straining at a curve;
My muscles move with steel,
I wake in every nerve.
I watch a beacon swing
From dark to blazing bright;
We thunder through ravines
And gullies washed with light.
Beyond the mountain pass
Mist deepens on the pane;
We rush into a rain
That rattles double glass.
Wheels shake the roadbed stone,
The pistons jerk and shove,
I stay up half the night
To see the land I love.