A personal letter to a personal friend

What matters is less how long we’re here, much more what we do with the time in which we’re here.

Recently, a dear friend celebrated what she called her “3 x 20” birthday and I have celebrated my “From 61 to 61” birthday, around the same time. I wrote her this, and someone else thought it was good, so you can read it too, suitably edited. It refers to some of the things you can see elsewhere on this blog.

Allow me to offer my warm congratulations on your third lap of the 20-year cinder track: happy birthday. Luckily, they don’t sound a bell at this athletic stadium when we are entering the last of our laps. Far from the encouragement that it imparts to a harrier, it would impart but despondency to the runners of life’s course.

Vera Brittain, who is an authoress you could do worse than discover, who was shell-shocked in the First World War and lost family in the conflict and became a resolute pacifist, wrote once “I don’t think victory over death ... is anything so superficial as a person fulfilling their normal span of life. It can be twofold: a victory over death by the man who faces it for himself without fear, and a victory by those who, loving him, know that death is but a little thing compared with the fact that he lived and was the kind of person he was.”

What matters is less how long we’re here, much more what we do with the time in which we’re here. I have quoted her recently in accompaniment to this image,

which I hope you agree is fitting to the sentiment she expresses. Mr Zelenskiy is honouring the victory over death of a man who faced it without fear; and he is honouring the wife and daughter who loved him for the man he was.

My great-aunt Ella had an autograph book, which was inherited by my mother and then by me. At the back of it is an entry by my father, in which he makes a rare demonstration of the cheek that resided deep inside of him. It reads:

                  “You have given me this book, that I might write something original in,

                  But there is naught original in me, except it be original sin.”

As I commence this epistle to mark 60 years of your life, I recall my father’s audacity, because it is a trait that he imbued me with: he was not forward, but he was crushingly honest. I’ve endeavoured all my life to be who I am, and have been repulsed in those situations in which I tried to be what I am not.

I inherited my first pled case in court from a colleague who was leaving the office that I worked for. The pleadings were wrong. I didn’t know it, and a short way into morning 1 of what would be a 5-day proof, if not of the case, of myself as a solicitor, the pleadings came under sharp scrutiny by a judge who fittingly bore the name “Sheriff Graham”. The judgment appeared some time later and found for the other side. Sheriff Graham was kind to Graham Vincent and included in his judgment the words (I remember them without needing to refer back): “I suspect that Mr Vincent was not responsible for this debacle. He soldiered valiantly with the case as pled.” It was a very skilful plea in mitigation to my employers by the man who thought they were idiots. I’ve been soldiering valiantly ever since.

My own 60-odd years have seen ups and downs, and as I write this, I find myself at the nadir of a particularly sharp down [and as the blog reader reads this, things have taken an unexpected and exhilarating “up” - all in a space of less than a month]. I cannot offer you even a small share of a bejewelled ring. My mind turns to a hymn which I learned as a small boy and which never fails to send shivers down my spine. It’s from a poem called A Christmas Carol by Christina Rossetti and, as set to music, is known as In the Bleak Midwinter:

What can I give Him,

Poor as I am? —

If I were a Shepherd

I would bring a lamb;

If I were a Wise Man

I would do my part, —

Yet what I can I give Him, —

Give my heart.

This August evening, as the summer bows out and a touch of autumn, such as Pozzo noted in Beckett’s En attendant Godot, wafts in the air, I feel a sense of midwinter. But it cannot [and did not] last for ever. And, in response to Pozzo, I invoke the spirit of a band you and I both love:

Stand up to the blow that fate has struck upon you,

Make the most of all you still have coming to you,

Lay down on the ground and let the tears run from you,

Crying to the grass and trees and heaven, finally, on your knees.

Let me live again, let life come find me wanting,

Spring must strike again against the shield of winter,

Let me feel once more the arms of love surround me,

Telling me the danger’s past, I need not fear the icy blast again

(Genesis: Undertow (from … and then there were three …))

If you seek uplift in classical music form, midwinter was the subject of a magnificent piece by a little-known Swedish composer called Wilhelm Stenhammar. His Midvinter can be heard here (this happens to be the recording I myself own; you need to be seated comfortably, with no distractions; it will then transport you to nirvana):

It hails from a period in classical music that knew seriousness more than any other I have tasted. The Edwardian period, that of Vera Brittain, which seems to have rued the overblown jollities of the Gay Nineties and foretold of the horrors that would come in the second decade of the century of our birth.

If my dear father had only original sin to offer to my great-aunt Ella, then, poor as I am, I offer you something from my heart; the heart that my father, my great-aunt, the boys at Genesis and Stenhammar have all in their time enriched. I hope it is no mean heart; I hope that it is no mean gift.

When I turned away from Facebook and towards LinkedIn, I discovered no Elysian fields of inspiration, but inspiration is there nonetheless, and it is a field largely bereft of bulls, potholes and lurking dangers. Kindness is more present there, at least.

In the six months in which I have resided there with greater presence, I have been inspired to write no fewer than – at the time of writing this – 51 articles [as at 25 September 2022, there are 54, but they’ll come here too, peu à peu] . Most are written as first and last draft in one. They can take as much as an hour to write, often less. They are not ill-considered, but the outpourings, if one will so couch it, of my heart. If I am to offer you my heart, then these are as good a representation of what is contained therein as anything. If you enjoy them, I am glad. If you appreciate them, then, you will have appreciated something more of what I am, of who I am, and you will know something more of why I appreciate your friendship.

We are both at a time in life when we start to look back on what has gone before and, I at least, look forward with some trepidation to what lies ahead: the future, never certain at the best of times, seems to threaten to cast off wheels that hold it to the rails we learned as youths to place trust in. In some parts, derailment has begun. If our train cannot hold fast to its rails, then we must hold fast to ourselves, to our beliefs, to our convictions, to our traditions and to our humanity. That’s what we were taught by our forebears, even by those who knew naught but original sin. It behoves us, therefore, in the name of all that is sacred, to rest true to it.

One more image haunts me every time I recall it. It is an image of now, and it is an image of the future. It is an image that at one and the same time, evokes in me great sadness, great joy and great hope. This little boy is perhaps 8 or 9 years of age. He is dressed in his Sunday best and he is being evacuated from his home, to save his life. The carriage in which he sits bears the colours that adorn his nation’s flag. He looks directly and unflinchingly into the camera and he seems to feel obliged to offer some kind of a smile. But it is no occasion at which to smile. His daddy is headed for the front, because his daddy loves him and wants his little boy to be able to grow up in peace in the land that they call home.

His smile is tempered with non-comprehension; his clean, washed face, his unbesmirched wee dungarees belie the worry that fills his heart. His is one of millions of tragic stories that criss-cross our globe. It is a fitting end to this epistle because you have devoted a great deal of effort and work and yourself to raising three wonderful boys who will carry with them not just the genes of which they are made but, just like this wee lad from Ukraine carries with him from his mummy and daddy, they carry in them the spirit that you have imbued in them over their lifetimes. Your sons are your greatest gift to the world and, on behalf of the world, I offer you my thanks. It is my greatest regret in this life that I never had children.