Jonathan Dodd‘s latest column. Guest opinion articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication. Ed
I’ve been thinking that my blogs have been getting far too serious lately. There’s not enough fun out there. I’ve probably been adding an additional intolerable burden to the general early-year misery which we all seem to carry about us like our own personal rain cloud. But I’m stuck. I don’t think I can do funny.
It’s not that I’m a morose individual who shuffles through life with my head down and never cracks a smile. My mouth doesn’t describe an arc similar to that of the Sydney Bridge. It probably resembles the Opera House down there more. My eyes aren’t dull and cloudy like the weather, because I’m an enthusiast, and the eyes of an enthusiast are usually lit from within by the internal fires of their obsessions.
Putting myself through this weekly torture course
What am I an enthusiast for? I can dimly hear you cry. Well. I obviously love writing, otherwise I wouldn’t keep putting myself through this weekly torture course. And I love to read. There are currently 57 books in piles alongside my bed, one of which will be the next book I read. I won’t know which one until I get to the last two or three pages of the current one. But I take my book everywhere with me, just in case there’s an opportunity to open it and dive in.
I’m enthusiastic about swimming and going to the gym. I was rubbish a sport in school. I don’t know if it’s the same now as it was then, but in my time, at my school, there were only two kinds of person who turned up to some freezing field in the equivalent of underwear in the middle of winter. There were the stars – those who were good at sport and were likely to play for the School teams and therefore make the P.E. teacher look good. And there was everyone else. The cannon-fodder, who would be herded about, shouted at and made to fill in the numbers.
Paying proper attention to the gods
My sports teacher used to train the First XI by making up two teams. The first of these contained all the good attacking players and a load of useless people, the second contained all the good defenders, and another load of pathetic makeweights. So when the whistle blew all the action took place at one end of the pitch. Everyone else huddled in the other half until half-time. The only exercise we got was to fetch the ball if a good player kicked it too far, or to run round the pitch if we were caught talking instead of paying proper attention to the gods battling it out at the other end.
I was born right-handed and left-footed. So my left brain, the analytical and tactical planner, would direct my right arm and hand perfectly, and my right brain, the wild and unpredictable rebel, would fail to direct my left leg where it was supposed to go, because it just refused to do that sort of thing. Needless to say, anything that required even basic co-ordination turned into an embarrassing farce. This also applied to any kind of dancing until the Sixties, when it didn’t matter any more.
My odd brain wiring cancelled itself out
But I was good at swimming. Probably because you just have to be able to swim straight, and my odd brain wiring cancelled itself out. Needless to say, swimming didn’t count at my school, because we didn’t have a First XI despite having a swimming pool. Perhaps there’s no fixed number for a swimming team and they can’t do the Latin numeral thing. Perhaps that’s why schools are now being encouraged to teach Latin again. I wouldn’t mind them teaching Latin if they first taught English properly.
So my sporting career was a flop, and I happily gave up all exercise in favour of the much more dashing smoking expertise. I was a happy smoker for 25 years, until I reached my mid-forties and started wondering how much longer I might have to live. When I managed to give that up I needed some justification, so I decided if I was serious about living longer I needed to take up some form of exercise. I went swimming, and embarrassed myself by being pathetic in the pool.
Perhaps a little more elegantly
Something happened though, because I felt ashamed of myself enough to go back a week later, with the ambition of swimming exactly the same distance, perhaps a little more elegantly. I managed this, and swam just a little further too, which pleased me greatly. I’ve been continuing the same process ever since, more or less, and I’ve never lost that thrill. I guess that qualifies for enthusiasm.
There are a lot of other things I’m enthusiastic about. My favourite thing is to engage in conversation with another enthusiast. It doesn’t matter what their own thing is, because it’s such a pleasure to hear the joy and excitement that they generate when they’re thinking about and talking about the subject of their enthusiasm. I don’t care if your thing is Aldershot Football Club, Victorian Railway Architecture, embroidery, or collecting matchboxes, I’ll still love listening to you talk about it. I suppose you could call me an enthusiasm junkie.
I hope you have things you’re enthusiastic about, and I hope they bring you joy even when the weather’s horrible.
And sorry I couldn’t think of something funny to say. Maybe next time.
If you have been, thank you for reading this.
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