Author Archives: Tim Lenton

Bring on the underdogs

Tennis fanatics – among whom commentators loom large – hate to see the big names lose. If Nadal (or Federer or Djokovic) loses in the first round at Wimbledon, this is seen as a major tragedy. How can it be a proper tournament without the champions?

I, on the other hand, love to see it, even if I know Nadal is a nice bloke, and even though I can see he is limping. Why do I feel this way? Because for me the true excitement in sport is to see the underdog win.

I take no joy in the same man winning year after year, even if he is the best, and even if he is a very pleasant fellow who does good deeds and rescues damsels from dragons in his spare time. The same goes for women, in case you were wondering.

If someone rated 200 places below the champion succeeds in knocking him out, this for me is cause for rejoicing. I am in awe, because somehow it seems the natural order has been overturned and the impossible has happened. Someone has exceeded what seemed to be their abilities.

Perhaps this is because deep down I know I have not done justice to my own abilities. I could have done much better. If I had applied myself, not been quite so lazy, I could have been very, very good… what at? I have no idea, but I’m pretty sure it’s not tennis.

And in case you think I harbour delusions of grandeur, I believe this is true of almost everyone. Brendan Foster, the former British middle distance star athlete, once said he was not the best middle distance runner in England: he was not even the best middle distance runner in Gateshead. But all those other potential stars had never given themselves the chance.

All those tennis players stuck in the lower hundreds (in the world!) have amazing skill. So do many club players. What they do not have is crazy application – the willingness to push and push and push until their skill does not just flare up now and again but remains at a scorching high level – all the time. That is what makes a champion. A work ethic. Willingness to accept punishment. But perhaps it also makes them slightly less than human.

They deserve to win, don’t they? Yes, but there is a problem for us, and it is boredom. When it begins to look as if Vettel is going to win every Formula One race in the foreseeable future, the whole competition goes off the boil. When the same man keeps winning Wimbledon, what’s the point?

We like to see the dark horse come through, late in the race, on the inside, unexpectedly. Was there ever a more exciting Olympic 800 metres than that won in 1964 by Anne Packer, a woman who had not even run an international 800 metres before, but stepped up from 400 metres at the last minute? Or the amazing finish of the outsider Dave Wottle in 1972?

That is the kind of thing that takes your breath away, not the same old winners, winning again.

It is not fair on the champions, of course, but champions have their reward: they are champions, they receive adulation and, in most sports, a great deal of money. As well as satisfaction.

As for me and my house, bring on the underdog. For we are underdogs ourselves. And we know the feeling. Or we’d like to.

Posted on June 26 2013 in Articles. Tagged , , , , .

No boundaries

Beyond history,
when the desert swam
in the homeland of martyrdom

west beyond the devil’s cave
there were no boundaries

and when the sand came
and the words were written

I could see nothing:
an indescribable shape
and unrecognisable colours

because terror has no beginning
and no end
where love is lost in the storm

and time sent to heal
repeats itself and fails

I look desperately
for some horizon
creeping up through the mist

silently, like a saviour

 

 

I wrote this poem after visiting the exhibition No Horizon at the Sainsbury Centre at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK

Posted on June 5 2013 in Poetry. Tagged , , .

Hogging the middle lane: impossible in Norfolk

What is the essential difference between gay marriage and hogging the middle lane? Hard to pin down, isn’t it?  People get very angry in each case, both for and against. Making law about them did not appear in any party’s manifesto, as far as I can recall. Possibly one of them strikes at the very heart of our culture, but I am not sure which.

Gay marriage has not yet affected me to any great degree, but hogging the middle lane certainly has – though less often than you might think. As a Norfolk resident, I do not encounter roads with middle lanes unless I travel out of the county.

There is not a single mile of motorway in Norfolk, and no three-lane roads. There may be people living in Norfolk who have never travelled on a road with three lanes.

And yet the Government feels compelled to permit the police to issue fixed penalty notices to offending drivers. It may be the only UK law that does not apply in Norfolk.

So why am I worried? The trouble is, unlike gay marriage, it is not entirely clear what constitutes “hogging the middle lane”. Is travelling at or around the speed limit in the middle lane more dangerous or annoying than the driver who overtakes you in the right-hand lane while you’re passing someone in the inside lane, then veers across the carriageway to the inside lane to show you how considerate (or law-abiding) he is?

Don’t get me wrong. Slow drivers in the middle lane are very annoying if  the outside lane is busy. They can be irritating anywhere, but you can’t make laws against irritating people. If you could, most politicians and television presenters would soon be illegal.

Hogging the middle lane, like tailgating (how close is a tail?), are wide open to interpretation. We may find both annoying, but how soon would it be before someone judges us  – excellent drivers that we are – as spending too long in the middle or driving marginally too close to the car in front? And of course we can’t argue our case. It’s either accept a fixed penalty fine and endorsement or go before magistrates who will automatically accept what the police say. Oh yes they will.

As a Norfolk driver I am more concerned with dual carriageways, where people hog not the middle but the outside lane. In Norwich itself (and I am sure elsewhere) you can find yourself crawling behind a driver who is in the outside lane either by accident or because he or she wants to turn right in three roundabouts’ time. As always, the bad drivers win.

And outside towns and cities there are still the HGVs who take minutes to overtake each other while a queue of cars piles up behind, disrupting the natural flow and creating clear and obvious danger. And while I’m at it, has someone changed the Highway Code so that if you want to overtake, you simply signal right and move out, regardless of what is happening behind you? How about some fixed penalty notices there?

What is really annoying though (oh, you thought I was already annoyed?) is that the Government puts all this stuff on the same level as something that is not careless or irritating, but downright reckless: texting while driving.

Can you imagine anything more idiotic? I can easily eat a sandwich while controlling a vehicle – especially if it is given to me by a passenger – but there is no way anyone can text safely while driving. And yet the penalty remains the same. Are we supposed to take these people seriously?

Of course when it comes down to it, nothing much will change, because there are so few traffic police on the road that even the worst driver is unlikely to get caught. I have always argued that this is a bad thing, because of the general efficiency of the traffic police, but with so many fixed penalty offences flying about, I am not so sure.

Posted on June 5 2013 in Articles. Tagged , , .

Boneland

Sometimes I step out of the wood
on to a straw-covered path:
a warm wind brushes the hill

Sometimes the woodland ways are too steep,
and the square, unbedded stones
bite into my sole

Sometimes I go on and
sometimes I go back
looking for a place so thin that
even I cannot mistake it

Always there is
the witching wood, and
I am knot-lost,

confronted by an angel who knows
the time and the place
and will uncover me

Feeling not despair but desire,
I recognise boneland,
the place of transition

where the turbulence of time
ebbs like a lackadaisical tide

and leaves me stretched
helplessly on the bare beach
holding on to godliness
but surrounded by demons

and the fishes of galilee:
trodden on,
transformed

 

 

I wrote this poem after walking  a footpath near Holt and visiting a bookshop

Posted on May 13 2013 in Poetry

Papering over the cracks

Hard to underestimate the excitement of a council election, with in cases up to 25% of voters rushing eagerly to the polling stations. Even more exciting, of course, when the boring old major parties get swept aside by a new clown on the block.

Yes, it’s the United Kingdom Independence Party, the politicians everyone loves to hate. Well, not everyone, maybe. Just right-thinking lower-case liberal democrats.

I mean, UKIP wants to get out of Europe and restrict immigration: they must hate foreigners, which is appalling. I suppose it’s possible that they think the European Union is an undemocratic bureaucracy, and they may think that this is a small country unable to support a huge influx of people, but that can’t be right, can it?

I have to admit that the sparkly new UKIP councillors I have heard speak do not seem models of intelligence and erudition, but few politicians are. As they say on Bargain Hunt, it’s a question of scale.

In any case, we don’t really want to see Nigel Farage as prime minister, do we? We just want to scare the hell out of those familiar faces who have no policies and too many advisers, who behave like out-of-touch parents who think they know what’s good for us but are really concentrated on what’s good for them.

In many ways they are behaving like a medieval church, with UKIP nailing some new ideas to the door and the smell of burning in the air.  Or maybe it’s not that dramatic. UKIP may not have the staying power, or even the conviction. Or enough nails.

So are we going to go back to those dull old Tories and Socialists, with Lib Dems under the rather pathetic illusion that they’re a party of government and the Greens rapidly losing the argument?

Is there something to be said  for the Conservatives? In the past they have represented law and order, the maintaining of traditional values, and economic security.

Nothing wrong with that, you may argue, but the Tories have lost sight of compassion and a sense of justice. What about socialism, then?

Socialism, as far as I can see, only works in a country where everyone is decent – where they love one another. Unfortunately that country has not yet been located. Experience shows that the best you can hope for is that people may love one another as long as it doesn’t put themselves at a disadvantage. People are largely interested in what’s good for them, which is why the late 1970s were so disastrous and so many of us were mightily relieved when Maggie Thatcher got elected.

Thousands who were not there, or not even born, will pour out rage against Mrs Thatcher in retrospect, but the self-interest that she is condemned for fostering is at the very least no worse than the self-interest promoted by trade union leaders in the late 1970s. Crisis? Yes, there was.

If you are looking for love, it’s no good looking at politics. You have to look at Christianity, I’m afraid, and as a society, we’re shelving all that. Love at any cost is the answer, but unfortunately no-one is asking the question.

“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting,” said Chesterton. “It has been found difficult and left untried.” Or corrupted.

Politics is not a natural environment for love, and perhaps the best politicians can do is paper over the cracks in our edifice of self-interest. If so, where is our hope? Where is real love?

Is it somewhere we just don’t want to look any more?

Posted on May 6 2013 in Articles. Tagged , .

Winter morning

Injecting ice
into the crack of dawn,
the east wind knocks twice
on my eyelids,
but no-one is in

 

This short poem was commended in the Norwich Writers’ Circle open competition this year and appears in their anthology

Posted on May 2 2013 in Poetry

Church targets hedgehogs

My eye was caught by a headline in a well-known church newspaper the other day. It read: “Church urged to help save the hedgehog.”

I sighed inwardly. The Church of England is capable of almost any kind of bizarre activity, and to be honest the salvation of hedgehogs is no odder than many of the things they get involved in, like pet services, civic services, the House of Lords and in the case of my own city’s Cathedral, building a nesting platform for peregrine falcons.

The Church of England, as we know, is broad church. As one eminent writer put it many years ago, “anything is possible in the Church of England – even Christianity”.

Hedgehogs are something else again, although I can see how they might fit in. Parochial church councils are notoriously prickly, for instance, and many congregations appear to hibernate for long periods.

The same newspaper report describes the hedgehog as a “near-endangered species”. Whatever this means (is it worse than slightly endangered, for example?), it seems to describe pretty accurately a number of Anglican communicants.

The prickliness of such church members, and their tendency to hibernate, may of course have something to do with their being nearly endangered. Perhaps if they could be more accurately described as bunnies, they would be more resilient, and church growth would not be a problem.

The Bible on the other hand has no truck with hedgehogs. It describes us all as sheep, which are not prickly but easily led. They also have a tendency to bleat, which many of us will identify with.

Would the salvation of sheep or rabbits be more straightforward than saving hedgehogs? I think it would, and one has to admire the determination of the church in tackling hedgehogs, especially when its avoidance of prickly questions at a national level is almost legendary.

Some might argue that Jesus is never reported to have said “Go into all the world and make disciples of all hedgehogs”, but of course one can’t prove anything from what is not mentioned.

We must applaud the Church of England’s radical outreach to all prickly creatures, to those who have many points to make, and to those who are asleep a lot of the time. And to hedgehogs, of course.

I understand the new Archbishop will be making a statement shortly. Or, possibly, not.

Posted on March 19 2013 in Articles

Translation

When you reach that place
you are translated
and I can no longer read you

A tightrope walker has been at work,
running the risk of getting the balance wrong
and falling

or a ferryman,
bringing you across rough seas
for whatever price is right

maybe an alchemist,
changing you from clay to gold
in little more than an instant

Now I am left with a commentary
that tries to unravel you
in my own language

tries to describe the unknowable journey
and the place you reached

I can no longer read you for myself
you are somewhere else
somewhere full of ecstasy
and empty of explanation

It is good to see you there

Posted on March 9 2013 in Poetry

Savage cruelty – the easy option

What could be worse than being trapped in front of a television set on a Saturday night? Ant and Dec, followed by The Cube, followed by Jonathan Ross.

Well, lots of things of course. Being trapped in a rugby scrum. Or living in one of the countries that underwent the Arab Spring and discovering that, as a Christian, you are now more likely to be killed than you were when the dictators were in power.

What could be quite as frightening as being confronted by a mob of wintry Arabs with misconceived religious beliefs? Perhaps being confronted by a mob of mad Englishmen with misconceived religious beliefs, as we have demonstrated quite convincingly in the past. As novelist Petru Dumitriu put it, there is nothing quite like “the savage cruelty of people who are sure they are right”, especially when there are a lot of them.

Part of the fear (on both sides) stems from an inability to understand what is being said by those who are foreign to our way of thinking. Language barriers are fearsome things, and translation is not an easy art.

I come fresh from a translation workshop led by Dr B J Epstein of the University of East Anglia, where the difficulties of getting all the meaning of a piece of writing across from one language to another were expounded clearly.

We tried to imagine how a passage from Alice in Wonderland, with its extremely English wordplay, could possibly be conveyed into Swedish (or anything else). My rather esoteric view is that it is impossible, just as it is impossible to translate poetry into another language, because there is too much involved: precision, rhythm, context, nuance, word play of many kinds.

And as much religious belief was expressed originally as poetry – or at least in a poetic language like Hebrew or Aramaic – it is not surprising that we may not quite “get it” when it is transferred into a modern, more literal tongue. We tend to end up with chopped up religion instead of the whole body. I’m not sure how this works with Arabic, but no doubt the opportunities exist.

Getting the spirit of a piece of writing is something we seem ill-equipped to do in the modern world, with its knee-jerk journalistic view of things and its painful self-righteousness and eagerness to cast the first stone, with many more to follow.

Perhaps the answer is to be aware that you may not quite understand the other person’s point of view, and to give him or her the benefit of the doubt – or at least listen as hard as you can.

The shorthand term for that is love, but maybe that would take too much time and effort. Much easier to throw something. A quick fix: it might make us feel better. Switch channels – there may be something better on the other side.

 

 

*After attending the workshop on translation, I wrote the following poem, which is of course not about translation but is helped by some of the ideas discussed there.

Posted on March 9 2013 in Articles. Tagged , , , .

Horse meat and Leonard Cohen

I could eat a horse, and so could you. So could most people, because a healthy horse is perfectly edible.

To call it a contaminant, as many in the media have done, is as misleading as calling carbon dioxide a pollutant. Horse is not toxic or impure, and nor is carbon dioxide, which is a naturally occurring gas, just as horse is a naturally occurring animal. If anything is being polluted here, it is language.

But there is something else going on, and Leonard Cohen, the master of language, foresaw it (and much more) in his song The Future. “Things are going to slide,” he said, “slide in all directions; won’t be nothing you can measure any more.”

The problem is not that there is horse in ready foods: it is that ready foods are so mediocre that you can’t tell whether there is horse in them or not.

Some concoctions invite substitution, like meat balls. Are they beef, pork or something even more sinister? If they don’t tell us on the tin – or the packet – how can we know?

All right, we can avoid that kind of food if we’re worried. But if we do, we are still faced with another trend in supermarkets: dumbing down. I have been infuriated recently in the vegetable section (and that can be dangerous) by finding potatoes labelled “Potatoes” or sometimes  daringly “White Potatoes”.

Now I suppose there may be people who don’t know a potato when they see it, or can’t tell the difference between white and red, but when I’m looking for potatoes I want to know what sort they are. I happen to like King Edwards, but they’re becoming increasingly hard to find.

I can foresee a time when, to avoid the horse problem, all meat will be labelled “Meat”; in fact I’m almost sure I’ve come across meat curry in the not-too-distant past. Then where will we be? I’ll tell you. We’ll be on the fish counter, trying to distinguish between hake (fish) and herring (fish).

Or will we just go for one of those “meal deals” that seem to crop up everywhere, and not worry our little heads about it?

Posted on February 14 2013 in Articles. Tagged , , .