Swapping not stopping

Going it alone

Up until a few days ago, I was, as a matter of routine, walking through the door after an already long day, laden with papers to process, and carrying a computer itself carrying any number of emails to answer, reports and spreadsheets to complete.

I'm now a lot happier and calmer and more relaxed.

I have, however, just swapped those reports and spreadsheets for others. These are business plans and cashflow forecasts, SWOT analyses and half-developed templates and consultancy agreements.

Lead me think about...

The Grass Arena

John Healy's book has been inexplicably out of print for a while. Inexplicable when every day sees the publication of the Daily Mail.

This is a book everyone should read.

Certainly, before expressing an opinion on anyone down on their luck, before judging anyone visiting the off-licence before sunrise, this is absolutely essential. Healy won a number of awards. There's a 1991 film that somehow passed me by, and the book is back out.

Healy was a decent boxer, decent to the point where he had little time for anything else.

Things went awry, and he ended up an alcoholic, homeless, living rough.

He then became decent at chess. Decent to the point where he was doing that thing grand masters do: playing numbers of simultaneous games against good local players and prodigies who hadn't lost a game since they were three years old, and stuffing them all out of sight.

It didn't make him any happier. It was just an exchange of obsessions and addictions: boxing for drinking and drugs for chess, as far as he was concerned, in the concluding chapters. An absolutely devastating ending for the reader hoping for an upbeat finish, redemption and atonement, with Alright Now playing in the background, alternating with Things Can Only Get Better – belied by brutal truth from the author, honestly assessing himself and addressing his ability to find true serenity and happiness.

Our governments, national and local, would be better equipped (and infinitely more interesting) with more Healys and fewer Ruperts, Jeremies and Tristrams. Less privilege, and fewer who think it could never happen to them.

It's a long time since I read The Grass Arena, MM's read it since me. But it's written in a plain, factual way, and should be enough to make anyone without the hardest and coldest of hearts take a different look at those who've hit a wall in terms of coping.

I'm sure each successive cohort has said that there's more to cope with now than there ever was before. I'm not sure that's the case. I am sure that there's never been enough compassion from the powerful for the powerless, and that understanding that but for the grace of god there go I is the starting point for understanding per se.