Reading Carlos Santana's entertaining autobiography, I
realise now where it all went wrong. And when. It was a long, long time ago.
At my advanced time of life, I suppose you start to look
back on your life and think, What have I
done with my allotted time? In my case, it's a matter of rather too much of
this and not enough of that. I've lived my life like a bumble bee, really,
flitting from one flower that looks interesting to another that looks equally
interesting.
The only thing that I can say in my defence is that at
least it kept me out of the civil service for any longer than the 15 years in
which I served Her Majesty's ministers. Time enough, and rather a shame that
they were probably the best years of my life. Still, if I'd gone on to be a
lifer, then I really would be in trouble now. Looking back on a life of files
and folders stacked on my irredeemably untidy desk. How awful. I suppose the
only succour would have been a rip-roaring send-off, a gold tray and an
index-linked pension with which I could have enjoyed the fraction of life
that's still hopefully left to me.
I wonder how my brother feels. Apart from a spell as a
waiter – the infamous epoch when he would keep his tips in a platform shoe that
didn't fit him – he's been a plumber all his life. There's nothing at all wrong
with being a plumber; they probably serve a far more useful function to society
than I do as a well-read dilettante (or good-for-nothing misfit, if I'm being
brutally honest). Even though his body is beginning to give up on him now and
even though his mortgage was paid off many moons ago and financially he doesn't
really have to, he still pushes himself hard. He tells me it's because he's
just a guy who can't say no and there are too many clients out there who need
him, but I suspect that he doesn't want to stop and look back at a life spent
soldering pipes and installing bathrooms. He has measured out his life in grout
and ceramic tiles and the knowledge must be somewhat unsettling.
For all that they fear our father's death and a time when
they cease to be, in their own eyes, 'useful', my sisters are all right because
they both fulfilled a worthy biological function: giving birth to a pair of
sons. I'm all for childlessness in this asphyxiated over-populated world, but
you can't say fairer than enjoying the fruits of their offspring's loins and
making the grade from motherhood to grandmother-hood. Life in the 'hood. Being
a grandparent must be a handsome compensation for old age.
I remember all my grandparents with huge affection, but
obviously feel special affinity now for my two grandfathers. Both were quiet,
seemingly simple men of few words. They spent their working lives in offices.
My maternal granddad was an auditor for the civil service who travelled around
to check that HM's books had not been cooked. My paternal granddad was a
company secretary. I haven't a clue what he did, but remember that he used to
travel by train to Waterloo every day once they'd moved to the commuter belt.
Both of them would surely have looked back on their working lives as time consumed
with files and folders. I doubt, though, whether it would have filled them with
the horror I would feel. Times were different then, expectations were more
humdrum and neither of them suffered in the slightest from any kind of artistic
yearning – although who knows? My maternal grandfather played the piano (rather
woodenly) and my paternal grandfather sketched on occasions – but surely just
to keep my artistic grandmother company.
Both were very good at pottering in their retirement.
Inveterate potters or potterers, if such a word exists. Which brings me back to
Carlos... For all his time as a disciple of Sri Chimnoy, the meaning of his
life was really quite simple. He recognised in his late teens that he had to
stop messing about and dedicate himself to one thing and one thing only. The
guitar. He decided that he had to put his body and soul into it or he would get
nowhere. Pottering wasn't for that hombre. And that's where I went wrong. Too
many interests, too many distractions, too little self-belief, not enough
output.
When I listen to Carlos Santana take a guitar solo, I
hear the result of that dedication. I hear what he calls the universal tone. That sense of a transcendent spirit gives me
goose bumps (or the 'chicken skin' that he describes when listening to John
Coltrane and other musical masters). It's rather too late to reach that kind of
astral plane now. I know that the novelist Angus Wilson blossomed late in life
– and I believe he might have been a civil servant – but such exemplars are few
and far between.
No, it's decision time –
and do I not like decisions. I have to decide whether to go on striving or to
accept that I missed the boat and just give in to my innate capacity for
pottering. I have to say, it's very tempting. But will I allow myself to potter?
If I give up any ambition to be a serious writer or a late-blooming radio DJ, I
can't see myself as someone happy enough – like my grandfathers were – to spend
his time either in an armchair or in the garden. Perhaps, like the actor James
Cromwell, I should become a senior environmental activist. But then again, no. Insufficient courage
allied to a conviction that it's a lost cause.
Of course, any thought of
pottering presupposes some kind of government subsidy. My application for French
support is turning into a long-running saga without much prospect of resolution
– rather like too many TV dramas that don't know when to stop, or the Jarndyce
v Jarndyce legal stalemate in Bleak
House. A new acronym has clambered out of the dense administrative woodwork.
CICAS seems to be an organisation that comes under the umbrella of AGIRC et
ARRCO. Please don't even ask. Suffice to say that they have sent me, not once
but twice, an intimidating form – printed of course on one side of the paper
only – to fill in. I was so intimidated by its initial appearance that I phoned
up and made an appointment to see someone. They offered me a day next week.
Then my mobile phone went off the other day and I spoke with someone intent on
getting me to cancel the appointment. I said that I didn't quite understand
what he was trying to tell me, whereupon he attempted to speak to me in English
much poorer than my French. In the end, after many crossed wires, it transpired
that I shouldn't have been sent this document because it was spewed out
automatically by their computer. Because I was never truly salaried in France
(despite the special agreement for writers), would I please return part of the
form with big French words to this effect, plus signature and date?
I was only too happy to oblige.
But then, a few days later, another copy of the monstrous document arrived,
followed a few days after that by a letter acknowledging the cancellation of my
appointment and a further document in a separate envelope – again printed on
one side of the paper only – asking me to forward all kinds of documentary
proof about my work situation. Then, soon after an e-mail to remind me of the
appointment, another letter arrived to say that they couldn't continue with my
demand because I was never salaried. Oh, the waste, the profligacy! It strikes
me as a metaphor for the way our Great Global Leaders go about trying to reach
some kind of decision about how to deal with factors that are anyway long beyond
any retroactive concerted action.
Words fail me. So will you
excuse me if I go outside and watch the bumble bees at work in our lavender
bushes? The 21st June has just passed us by and we are now on a
downward trajectory. It might brighten my mood if I study these endangered
velvety little creatures busily going about their pre-destined toil, oblivious
to the two-legged pottering giant, regarding at close quarters the way they
move so contentedly from one flower to the next.
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