The Scenic Route

I came to driving later in life than most – I was 30 when I passed my driving test – which, added to an admittedly neurotic sense of loyalty and a deep-seated reluctance to spend money on cars, means I have owned relatively few cars over the years, all of them bought used (very used, in some cases), and kept until the end of their useful, lawful life. Let's see: two Minis, a couple of bangers – a Nissan and an Austin Rover, bought off people at work that lasted just a couple of months each – and a Vauxhall Nova, supplemented by my partner's cars, a couple of VWs and a Ford Fiesta, inherited from her parents. But in 2005 we bought together a Renault Scenic "Fidji" – a top of the range model, with a 1.8 litre engine, air-conditioning and two sunroofs, just a couple of years old – as a suitable car for family holidays with our two school-age children.

Scenics have a mixed reputation for reliability but we have loved that car, which rarely gave us any trouble at all. I still remember sitting behind the steering wheel for the first time at the dealership, and feeling that command of the road that even a slightly elevated seating position endows. After sitting with one's backside so close to the road in a series of small saloon cars it was a revelation. Much as I hate the current vogue for bloated SUVs, I can understand the motivation: simply being able to see more of the road is a safety bonus in itself, and then there is the better view of the surrounding landscape for passengers, always assuming the ones in the back seats haven't got their noses buried in their phones or, more realistically in those days, their Game Boys.

Then there is the storage capacity. Packing for a two-week holiday with children is always a challenge with the typical European-style hatchback; it becomes more of a case of what to leave behind rather than what to take (although sometimes "who" can be very tempting, too). But with the Scenic, it was just, "all aboard, and sling it all in the hold!" Even better, with the back seats removed you have the equivalent of a light van, capable of transporting a large chest of drawers, an 88-key electric piano, or numerous IKEA flatpacks. The car even has a cellar! Well, two storage compartments in the floor in front of the rear seats.

Like a faithful family retainer, wherever we wanted to go – Norfolk, Dorset, Scotland, France – it would uncomplainingly carry whatever burden we chose to stuff into it, mile after mile, trip after trip. Until, that is, in 2019 it started to struggle up the steeper hills in Dorset, and then in 2021 our garage warned us about a worn clutch that "might go in 10, or 10,000 miles, hard to say..." So, our children having moved on into adult life, our recently-acquired and remarkably fuel-efficient Skoda Citigo took over the longer journeys, and the Scenic settled into a comfortable retirement of short, local trips, mainly shuttling rubbish and garden waste to the municipal dump.

This year, however, our Scenic finally went for scrap. It would probably have scraped through its MOT test, yet again, but after 20-plus years everything had begun to fail. The speedometer was temperamental; I had bodged-up the screen washer tubing several times in recent years to get it through the MOT; rust was setting in and much of the plastic was decaying, so that on damp days your hands came away from the steering wheel and gearstick coated with a sticky black deposit. It was a sad moment, seeing an old friend driven away on a low loader, but I try my best not to be sentimental about the inanimate and mechanical members of the family.

However, as I have written before, an inclination to invest inanimate objects with thoughts, feelings, and personality seems to be one of humanity's more indelible characteristics; what you might call an animistic cast of mind. It takes a far sterner rationalist than me to bin a favourite cup when it cracks or its handle comes off, for example. Eventually I will do it, but there needs to be a suitable period of mourning first, while the cup lies in state on a shelf. Sometimes, this can take years.

Most young children, of course, seem to inhabit a permanently liminal world, where consciousness swirls in and out of things like a tide. My daughter was particularly susceptible as a toddler, occasionally entering a state we referred to as "goggling", which involved holding her breath and trembling visibly in an open-mouthed, wide-eyed stare of rapture, as (we presumed) the toys arranged before her came to vivid life. She was our little living-room shaman. But that animistic tide keeps going out further and further as we grow, until the crucial moment arrives as so poignantly (and hilariously) captured by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band: "Mummy, teddy's stopped breathing!"

But the idea that certain categories of object acquire a personality in use is not just a vestige of childhood enchantment. New instruments need to be "played in" to develop their tone, and the quality of their final tone may well depend on the quality and character of their initial playing-in. What could be more full of personality than a pair of old shoes, and more devoid of personality than a pair of new ones? And who does not keep an assortment of pebbles, conkers and the like in their coat pockets, that gradually over the years acquire a deep patina and "pocket polish"? What? Oh, OK; just me, then.

I am convinced that cameras, too, exert some kind of influence over the pictures that emerge from them that far exceeds their mechanical functioning. You have to meet a camera half-way, get to know it, make friends, and persuade it to do its best for you. You must have noticed how awful the first batches of images from a new camera are? You can set it on "auto everything" or on full manual, you can even use a cable release, spirit level and – gasp! – a tripod, and still get rubbish. Blurry, over-exposed, poorly-composed rubbish. Yet, a few months later, if you've played it in nicely, you can even forget to check what settings you're using, as you and your camera will have finally got your harmonious act together, and the magic can begin to happen.

I'm just about reaching that point with a used Olympus E-M5 iii I bought last summer. In some weird way, I have had to exorcise the ghost in the machine installed by the previous owner, who had clearly not made friends with the camera; after all, he'd sold it on "priced to sell" not so long after he'd bought it. I think it's a bit like buying a rescue dog from the kennels: it takes time for an abusive or unloving owner's traces to be erased. Sounds nutty, I know, but you can trust me on this one.

Eventually, however, neglected objects will become disenchanted. In the back of a cupboard or the depths of a drawer, you may come across a keepsake or a forgotten item that was once in everyday use; a cigarette lighter or a fountain pen, perhaps, or a postcard from a gallery you once visited. You'll look at it, and remember why you kept it, but nonetheless know that, as sung by B.B. King, the thrill is gone. Any remaining inner spirit has finally slipped away, and you can safely bin the thing.

Sadly, though, you can't leave old cars without tax, MOT, or insurance to fully disenchant themselves in the street before scrapping them. So, goodbye, old friend... It's been great, and we won't forget you!

Sling it all in!

Football Considered as One of the Fine Arts

The World Cup is nearly upon us, and armchair pundits across the globe who have shown little or no interest in football in the previous four years are in intensive training, preparing to opine. I myself have absolutely no interest in the game, World Cup or no, so there's no need for any snarky schadenfreude about Southampton's recent "spying" scandal: I genuinely don't care, and find the whole affair hilarious. Unlike my neighbours.

I have never been a spectator at a professional game of anything in my entire life, and cannot see the attraction. I used to play in football teams at primary school and in the Cubs, but never really understood the game and certainly never felt obliged to choose a famous club to follow. In fact, AFAIR the rules and strategies of football were never actually explained to us: it seems to have been presumed that boys were either born with a footballing gene, or would already have absorbed them by osmosis from society at large. As a left footer I played in the position known as "left wing", and dutifully ran up and down the leftmost touchline, occasionally hoofing the ball into the middle of the pitch to someone who clearly cared rather more desperately than me to have it at his feet. In fact, my fondest memories are of the orange segments doled out from an enamel plate at half time or, in the coldest weather, hot mugs of OXO beef stock.

However, as seems to have happened at many state grammar schools, in the 1950s my secondary school had banished football in favour of rugby and hockey, partly in an effort to make gentlemen out of us New Town oiks, but mainly, I suspect, to avoid all that unmanly celebratory hugging that had broken out on the professional football pitch. [1] I didn't really understand either of those games, either, but luckily my role as goalkeeper of the school's hockey First XI required little strategic understanding beyond stopping that hard little ball going past me into the goal; something for which I had an unsuspected talent, mainly driven by a fear of the bloody thing hitting me in the face. It always amuses me when I pass hockey matches on our local sports ground and see the goalies togged up like samurai warriors in helmets, face guards, table-sized leg pads, and what appear to be a pair of oversized foam-rubber glove-puppets. I wore nothing but a tracksuit, some batsman's pads with a pair of precariously buckled-on canvas "kickers", plus a pink plastic cricket box shoved inside my underwear.

Anyway, to return to football... The imminent World Cup reminded me of an ancient post from 2010, and I thought it might be timely to share my thoughts on football's future again. The title, obviously, alludes to Thomas De Quincey's essay Murder, Considered as One of the Fine Arts, but not in any constructive, useful, or even amusing way. So here it is again, as usual lightly edited:

Football Considered as One of the Fine Arts

My rant back in November about "project proposals" (it's OK, thanks, I'm feeling better now) made me wonder about the widespread uneasiness with "elitism" and "craft" in the fine arts and, by contrast, their complete acceptance in the realm of sports. How odd, ironic even, that the over-educated middle classes should agonize about the unfairness of unevenly-distributed talent in the aesthetic realm, while the mass audience for, say, football is completely untroubled by it. Such is ideology.

However, it is clear that the arts are ahead of the game here, so to speak, and some useful changes could be made to sport that echo some of the progressive moves made in the arts in recent decades. Here is the text of a speech I propose to make to the Football Association at the earliest opportunity.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Football needs to change. Here's how:

1. The top teams are unashamedly elitist, drawing team members from a very narrowly-defined segment of the population, and this needs to be challenged. There is no justifiable reason to restrict a career in football to fit young men and women with an affinity for sport. Footballing talent is quite likely evenly spread across the population: we'll never know unless we look. I suggest it be made mandatory that teams are assembled using a process similar to jury service. Eleven people must be easier to find than twelve, after all.

2. Community involvement is traditionally strong in many football clubs, but over time some teams have indulged the appeal and financial rewards of a rootless cosmopolitanism (yes, we're looking at you, Man Utd.). I suggest all teams, players and fans are henceforth strictly "localized", i.e. drawn from local electoral rolls. Serious consideration should also be given to compulsory local spectator attendance at matches, to foster community spirit.

3. It is unarguable that the Premier League has wrecked the wider game, financially. I suggest we adapt the model current in the arts, i.e. reverse the cash-flow by making players pay to play. Gate money could be distributed to players, in part, as compensation, perhaps allocated on the basis of a spectator ballot or satisfaction survey ("On a scale of 1 to 10...", etc.). As in the arts, professional aspiration should be restricted to in-house "residencies", retained primarily for community outreach purposes, usually on a two-year non-renewable contract.

4. There is an unhelpful and vulgar emphasis on success through playing and winning games. I think we need look no further than events like the Booker or the Turner prizes to see that pre-selection of a shortlist of teams from which celebrity pundits can select a "winner" is a far more efficient way of deciding "success". This would also free up much valuable broadcasting time.

5. Football is radically under-theorized. Noting that even the driving test now has a theory component – a progressive move we can only applaud – I suggest that no match should be played without a properly-qualified theorist on-site to evaluate, challenge and generally deconstruct the referee's decisions. The theorist's decision will be final (if rather protracted).

6. I worry about the expression, "the beautiful game". Beauty is a contested category, and there are significant and under-represented sections of the community for whom football is far from "beautiful". However, once these proposed measures are in place, I think we will find ourselves naturally referring simply to "the game".

Thank you for your attention in this matter.

1. Famously, football is "a gentleman's game played by hooligans" and rugby "a hooligan's game played by gentlemen". Not sure about hockey... In our case, a game played by hooligans who'd rather be playing football? There was always a moment of class-conscious weirdness at the end of inter-school matches, made especially strange when the match had been an ill-tempered and occasionally violent affair. The captain was obliged to shout, "Three cheers for Scumbag Academy! Hip hip!", and the team was meant to respond with three hearty shouts of "Hooray!", although this was usually rendered as a reluctant and diminishing group grunt, along the lines of "Rerh... Rerh... Rerh..." . I recall the appallingly fractious annual grudge-match against a south London school, William Penn (a.k.a. "Billy Biro"), which was endlessly interrupted by penalties, injuries, and what can only be described as racist incidents. One year our team captain, Terry, simply refused to call for the obligatory three cheers, drawing down on himself the spluttering outrage of the teacher acting as our referee-cum-coach, who TBH was lucky that Terry didn't deck him.

A Mug's Game

I was visiting a friend the other day, when the conversation somehow turned from music to money matters, and in particular the pitiful returns on savings accounts. For years the banks have been offering interest rates at around 1.5% p.a. or less, for example, but are now boasting of rates of 4.5%. In other words, and in case you're as bad at mental arithmetic as me, what used to be a risible £1.50 of interest on every £100 invested is now a whole £4.50! Before any tax, that is... It barely seems worth the effort of setting up an account for a pittance like that, does it?

So I mentioned that, in effect, the best annual return I get has actually been from my Premium Bonds, originally bought for me as a child, and which I top up periodically whenever I'm feeling lucky. I don't think I'm very unusual in winning a small prize most years that rivals or exceeds that much-vaunted 4.5%. Indeed, my friend revealed that he had actually won a prize of £10,000 in February, which really is quite some return on the investment. For non-British readers I should explain that Premium Bonds are a venerable, government-backed savings scheme which (a) pays no interest, but (b) guarantees that your money is 100% safe, and (c) enters your bond numbers into a monthly draw, with tax-free prizes ranging from £25 to £1 million. The winners are drawn by a random-number generator, affectionately known as ERNIE. Since 1956, the chance of "winning something on ERNIE" has added a little risk-free fun to millions of mainly working-class lives.

 Doubtless, real financial risk can be even more fun, provided you can afford to spare the cash, and accept the risk of losing it, too. As the usurers banks are obliged to say, "your investment may go down as well as up, and you may get back less than the amount you invested". Then, of course, for those addicted to the buzz of really risky risk there is gambling, pure and simple; not so very different from finance in principle, but a more-or-less guaranteed money loser. Having been brought up in a Baptist household, I have a reflex aversion to gambling in all its forms, not to mention a bone-deep, atavistic fear of "tempting fate" by placing a bet on the outcome of any real-life event. All theological arguments aside, I suppose the core moral objection to gambling is that the real price of your hypothetical jackpot win is paid in the misery and ruin of all the other habitual and guaranteed losers. An addiction to gambling is the same as any other addiction that involves throwing money after short-term thrills. Fine, if you're a well-heeled fool; not so much, if what you're pushing over the bookmaker's counter is this week's rent.

There is also that stiff-necked dissenting-protestant emphasis on the importance of hard work as Route A to happiness and success in life, rather than the pure luck of, say, being born into wealth or winning the lottery, both of which usually turn out to be a curse: those whom the gods wish to destroy... But all of us are subjected to a constant barrage of opportunities for those capricious gods of good fortune to smile on us, even though we know that the chances that they will are vanishingly small. Win this, win that; grab this, grab that... It's unrelenting. There's barely a product on the supermarket shelves that is not offering some sort of prize draw, and it is astonishing how many of the late-night TV adverts are for online gambling. And the hypocrisy is breath-taking: so many of these "come to online Vegas!" ads are dressed up with a pious "always gamble responsibly" message. It's as if snack adverts were to caution, "Hey, you, check out these tempting biscuits... I know! They do look delicious, don't they? But, listen, just one is plenty, Tubs!" [1]  (Oh, and buy just three packs and get a chance to win an all-in holiday in Las Vegas).

But the pervasive message that "life is best when it's a high-stakes gamble" is destructive, especially to the young. Clearly, we have a real problem with providing enough suitable job opportunities for those starting out in life – a problem which AI seems designed precisely to make worse – but this problem has a flip-side: apparently far too many young people will only apply for glamorous jobs for which they are self-evidently unqualified. As I wrote in the post Tides:

Far too much attention is paid to the exceptional: the Premier League footballer, the champion boxer, the TV show host, the popular musical act, and all the other celebrity poster-people for improbable, lottery-scale "success". It's understandable, but nothing constrains social mobility as effectively as the idea that life is an all-or-nothing gamble. The true nature of the systematic, embedded privilege of the well-established, well-placed, and well-to-do is well-hidden behind the attention-grabbing blind of these wild-card outliers. By focussing ambition on flashy careers in broadcasting, music, and sport, too many young lives are doomed to disappointment – "shallows and miseries", indeed – their eyes having been diverted from the true prize: regular places on the ferry that leads from the world of precarious wage-work to solid middle-class professional jobs, secured by pursuing those low-risk, achievable goals, defined by hard work, exam passes, and well-trodden career paths. Boring, but true.

It's a competitive world, of course. But, as I know only too well myself, the usual outcome for anybody who enters any sort of competition – in my case, attempts to get my work seen on a wall somewhere – is rejection, which in the end can begin to feel like Charlie Brown's repeated attempts to kick the ball that Lucy will pull out of the way at the last second, every time. Aaugh! I mean, why bother? I suppose you could say that at least your ego is getting the benefit of a decent work-out from the humility-inducing, hubris-squashing effects of serial rejection: feel the burn! But in the end, as the doctor said, if it hurts when you do that, the best advice is to stop doing it.

Some might also say that, where art is concerned, rejection could be taken as a sort of back-handed compliment: just some blinkered gatekeeper's timorous misjudgement of your obvious merit, a passing over that will one day be rectified by posterity. Remember the Salon des Refusés! Van Gogh didn't sell a single picture in his lifetime! People thought Blake was just a weirdo! Which rectification, in a very few exceptional cases, has indeed turned out to be forthcoming. But most artists and writers have always sunk without trace, even the ones who did get published, exhibited, and even sold well in their day: they may have been good, but they weren't good enough to progress to the final rounds of the grand ongoing art-historical competition.

In the end, that will be the inevitable fate of all of us neverwozzes and also-rans, who have spent far too much time and money playing in the art casino. So, to adapt that cautionary mantra of the banks: "your investment is more likely to go down than up, and you will surely get back less than the amount you invested". It's a mug's game, art, so remember: always make art responsibly... Or maybe think of buying some Premium Bonds instead?

1. I'm reminded of an old friend's story about his Scottish grandmother, who would proffer a plate of biscuits, and say, "Have lots! Have two..."