The World Closes Down Behind Me and other stories

 I've long been aware how the world I lived in collapsed just after I'd passed through it and the latest casualties of the High Street and the public house industry have added a further chapter.

I went a grammar school in the 1970's. I didn't see it as elitist then and still don't now. The 11-plus only really sorted out what sort of education suited people best although it did so arbitrarily at the age of 11. Even at our school, it was only the academic A stream that continued with Latin. I'm not sure I went into the Woodwork room more than once and although the Latin has proved hugely of interest ever since, some practical skills might have come in useful, too.

But grammar schools were seen to be wrong, even by some subsequent Conservative governments and they were being phased out before I'd even finished.

The same applied to the grant-financed, broader (much broader) idea of university education, arriving in 1978 by which time some were already missing the old days and that no pianos had been thrown out of upstairs windows for a few years. But it had yet to become the qualifications supermarket they seem to be now with lesson plans, right and wrong answers and students going there to achieve suitably graded MA's to get jobs with. In our day there was a reading list, a few lectures and seminars, you did a couple of essays and there was an exam at the end. The courses were things like 'Elizabethan Literature', some of the teaching was not up to much but we knew where the library was.

I was first employed in a retail job by a company that spectacularly imploded on its Mr. Bean-like chairman not very long after we parted company. More successfully, my civil service career survived some 33 years as the institutions were cut, economised, subject to various bright new plans to make it efficient and to many the glorious good times that had been enjoyed for so long were eroded down to a grim set off processes. Not that I had much to complain about as some younger colleagues paid off their student loan bills.

During all this time, pop music debased itself from the post-Beatles and Motown miracles, through the wonders of Bowie and Bolan, reggae, disco, punk, maybe Prince and some derivatives to a commodified product that bear no comparison to Hunky Dory.

Maybe now pensions aren't quite what they were, as neither were mortgages but, again, I got in and, where necessary, got out again, just in time to have not much to worry about which seems shamefully self-satisfied and possibly even middle-class but one's first duty is to look after oneself so that nobody else has to.

But now it's pubs which I don't have so much call for these days but did once constitute a big part of my life with their pool tables, Guinness, racing tipsters and baroque discussions. Again, something served its purpose before being dismantled not long after I'd finished with it.

Perhaps it's the same for every generation whether their life was fundamentally changed by Jethro Tull's invention of the seed drill or if, like for my grandfather, who was born in 1894 and had his own motor mechanic business, who was born a Victorian before man had successfully flown but lived to see Concorde in the flesh and moon landings on the telly. But that must have seemed like progress whereas  my equivalent story reads like loss, computers and the internet for better or worse notwithstanding.

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Moments of high excitement over the chess board recently took me, after all this time, to an extraordinary new high and took the rating for 30 minute games at Lichess to 1918, not only above the previous best of 1900 but above the 1917 for 5 minute games and joy was unconfined.

The final position that achieved that was a bit of a fluke. White has attacked my knight in the hope of making him go away but he is still covering the a2 square so my rook advancing to trap the king on its back rank is still just as much checkmate as it was going to be except I thought the king could go to a2 and only imagined I'd be gaining the pawn on c2. But that's fine by me.

That ought to be the end of chess reports here for a while as I've now ruined the stratospheric (for me) ratings at both 30 mins and 5 mins and will now go back to shifting the pieces around for light amusement.

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This is a much better book than I thought it would be when it turned up, admitting it was printed by Amazon, with none of the usual footnotes, with an odd way of having chapter titles on one page with the chapters being overleaf, large-ish print taking it to 400 pages but not looking somehow quite the part.

But I've been wrong before, first impressions can be misleading and one shouldn't judge a book before one's read it. It's fine and Charles L. Mee Jr. is doing a fine job of filling me in on Rembrandt. Highly readable, completely accessible and credible as far as I'd know, with any amount of the necessary background information that needs to be included to justify the surmising involved in guessing at the life of someone from a long time ago from inconclusive evidence, it's a surprise hit and I'm looking forward to the rest of it before going back to Muriel Spark, who is probably also better than I ever knew.  

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Meanwhile, Racetrack Wiseguy advises a good look at Mr. Henderson's runners at Sandown tomorrow plus Allmankind in the 1.50. It is very much to be hoped that Allmankind doesn't become that very worst kind of horse, one that loses when I back him and wins when I don't. This is his very last chance having backed him at Cheltenham in March and tipped him here first time out this season when he lost but swerved him when switching to fences last time when he won. 

Tomorrow will be a big day in seeing if I can retrieve 2020 for profit. Eventually it comes to a defining moment and one puts one's betting boots on. It's not quite Now or Never but it just about is.

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And, finally, the joys of rediscovered music. It's a long, long time since I gave any thought to this record but, presumably at the end of some long train of thought, I became possessed by it enough to put the CD on, with headphones, loud, with respect to the neighbours.

It is a revelation, whether due to any digital remastering or not I wouldn't know. It makes me wonder how good all the other pop records I have would be, re-enjoyed like that. Had I but world enough, and time.

It's Court in the Act by Lindisfarne, written by Missy 'Misdemeanour' Alan Hull.