My sister reads The Mail On Sunday and the Daily Mail. She's my sister, so I love her all the same. Last weekend she sent me a photo she'd taken of a travel article by a Mark Sampson. It was a bit of a shock to the system – not only to realise that there was another me (I'd already come to terms with that after the sacking of Mark Sampson, the coach of the women's England football team, the 'Lionesses'), but also that this other me was writing travel articles. My career in that respect is over, ever since the folding of France Magazine. I hate the Mail with a vengeance, but they pay top dollar for this kind of article. The best I ever managed was one for The Times.
I suppose we all like to think that we're unique, different from the crowd. That must be hard if you're called John Smith or David Philips or Mike Brown, but there aren't too many Mark Sampsons to the acre, certainly not travel journalists. So the surprise was a little akin to that of Alain Delon in the title role of Joseph Losey's marvellous film, Mr. Klein, when the truth gradually dawns on him that he has a doppelganger. An impostor of sorts. Mr. Klein, the art dealer who sells his works to Jewish clients finds himself caught up in the round-up of Paris Jews in 1942.
I know nothing about my doppelganger other than that he must be finding more success in his chosen field than I did. I don't resent him that. Good luck to the scribe, I say. Like everything else I have tried in life, I never gave 'all of me' to it. I never followed through. Even now, in my dotage, I dabble here and I dabble there and my days add up to the sum total of bits and pieces. I still scribble down ideas for screenplays, short stories, children's novels and so on that realistically I know I'll never get round to developing. I even harboured the idea of being a columnist for a while, which is probably why I keep up this monthly blog: just to prove to myself that I can do it should the call from an editor ever come. It's getting a little late in the day now.
How I envy both of my grandfathers, who were able ostensibly to give up all desire to achieve something, anything, and concentrate on mixing a potent gin and tonic or completing the Daily Telegraph every day or keeping their garden trim. Both of them knew how to potter. It came easily to my father's father, who passed on the pottering gene to his son. I'd love to potter more – if only I could allow myself to do so. My maternal grandfather was not a natural potterer, but then he wasn't as driven as my mother or me.
My lifetime friend Winston understands. We were talking about this the other day on Signal, looking back on careers that could barely be termed 'professional'. Neither of us took work seriously enough and therefore failed to rise to the level that maybe we should have done, given our education. It all seemed so... so silly and pointless in the final analysis. Maybe it was our education that was to blame: we were taught the importance of acquiring good grades in rarefied academic subjects, and nothing about the realities of adult life. E.M. Forster and others of his kidney ultimately meant far more than the business of winning friends and influencing people at work. We both ended up as dilettantes. Wasters by any other name.
'What did your father do in the 21st century?'
'Oh, he was a dilettante.'
'That's interesting. What is a
dilettante?'
Exactly. I'd be happy enough to settle on that identity, but it suggests a bit of this and a bit of that, and nothing in particular. The Concise OED (note that I don't go in for the complete version) defines it as 'Lover of the fine arts; one who toys with subject or studies it without seriousness.' And if that weren't damning enough, it goes on to brand my kind as 'trifling, not thorough.' In recent years, I have earned the opportunity to follow my passion for music as a music critic, journalist and occasional DJ. But even that's not enough. I fail to devote myself 100% to it, because I can't renounce the desire to create literature with a certain substance. However, would I swap my happy life for the literary prizes that F. Scott Fitzgerald, for one, gained effectively in exchange for a longer life?
Hey ho. Such existential concerns seem so trifling when there are people in the world trying to dig their way out of rubble in the Middle East, or flee with their family from Russian missiles. Or just plain trying to get through each day in turn without knowing where their next meal is coming from.
Or people trying to come to terms with an innate impulse to dress up in women's clothes. Now that would provoke an identity crisis. Fortunately, I've always been happy enough with variations on male garb. The idea of wearing a nightie in bed doesn't appeal to me. The Good Wife, a very tolerant creature at the best of times, told me that she'd find it challenging to sleep with her man in a night dress. Before taking one of the few trains heading for Paris the other morning on yet another day of national strikes, she and I watched a wonderful documentary the night before in the estimable Storyville series on what remains of BBC Four.
The film was called Casa Susanna after the camp in the Catskills in upstate New York owned and run by a woman who ran a wig shop in Manhattan and her husband Tito, who assumed the name of Susanna when he dressed up. At a time in the late '50s and early '60s when such liberties were not tolerated, it offered 'cross-dressers' – as they tended to call themselves and be called at the time – the incredible opportunity to stay there and dress as they wished and commune with others of their persuasion. If the cabins have fallen into disrepair now, it's hopefully symbolic of more tolerant times, when secret summer camps for 'queers' are no longer necessary.
The documentary focused in particular on two octogenarians, both of whom tried but failed to lead a 'normal life' as married men – one of whom had three children from a 20+-years marriage – and ended up opting for 'the surgery'. The mere thought of the drastic final solution makes me come out in hives, but Katherine and Diana both seemed to end up happy enough with their new identities. It was a beautiful, tender film and one of the most moving documentaries I've ever had the pleasure to sit through. It didn't, however, tempt me to slip into a nightie.
Watching it served to underline what a fortunate and uncomplicated life I lead, and how silly I am to trifle over ontological matters of identity. Nevertheless, now that I'm alone for a fortnight and resolved to catch up on some of the obscure films I tend to record, I think I'll opt for Robert Mulligan's The Other from 1972; see if it casts any more light on the business of doppelgangers. I can do that sort of thing now that I'm retired. Ah! Now there's a good solid identity I could assume: Monsieur Sampson, retraité. Retired. Anything else is a luxury.
