Oh, Babe, What Would You Say

I've long been interested in the difference between optimists and pessimists. It must be wonderful to be an optimist, genuinely believing that it's all going to be alright, but surely their lives are full of disappointment whereas for those of us whose pessimism is devout enough take solace in each small piece of good fortune.

When I feel fit enough, I try to adopt the devil may care attitude of a Danny Baker, with my cap on the side of my head and a repertoire of ready-made epithets to fit any occasion but I'd rather side with Vicky Coren's darker view expressed when introducing Only Connect. Thus I rejoice in the variegated possibilities of a personality that can be more than one dimensional, unlike some of those overheard on Portsmouth buses and in the purgatorial shopping arcades of Gunwharf on a Saturday. It is in line with my dual favourite poets, Philip Larkin and Thom Gunn, one of who was a hedonistic adventurer into whatever life had to offer while the other said he wouldn't mind going to China if he could come back the same day. But don't suppose for one minute that I've caricatured them in the right order.

I wouldn't usually be in Gunwharf and especially not on a Saturday. My only memory of going for a drink there was the miraculous occasion on which I was persuaded to eventually listen to the free CD of The Libertines that had come with The Observer several months before. It didn't quite change my life but it did revise my opinion of Pete Doherty from 'waste of skin' to 'pop genius'.
But Gunwharf is the best place for me to get the bus back from Old Portsmouth, where I had to go today to collect my new acquisition, an acrylic on canvas called Rainy Night by Dave Brimage from the Portsmouth and Hampshire Art Society's exhibition.
I mean, look at me, flaunting the cash won from six consecutive winners by buying art like a Saatchi.
I wish I could attach a photograph of the painting and perhaps I soon will but, relishing the facility of a new computer that responds quite so quickly has the downside that I can't immediately see how I can put photographs from the camera onto the computer. But I've got my technical man working on it.

And so rather than struggle further with setting up a new website for Portsmouth Poetry Society just now or worry about how the sequence of six winners came to an end today, I'll go and contemplate the painting, which is very much the sort of painting I would like to do if I could paint. You'll see.
And, nearing the climax of the Stendhal book, I can wonder if it's tremendous, great or simply of its time; I can marvel at Stuart Maconie's social commentary in The People's Songs in which I've just reached the point where I've not heard of some of the records he uses as reference points.
And I can think that there is no excuse for anything but pessimism, take comfort in that and enjoy the good things that do, quite regularly, offer themselves. 

It might be depressing that last week a Times football pundit wrote that he was looking forward to more 'bickering' in the game in the forthcoming season because the comma was misplaced in the otherwise facile sentiment he was trying to express or that a BBC radio reporter said that Usain had 'defended' the 100m and 200m Olympic titles three times. No, he didn't. He won them three times but successfully defended them twice.
Before he died, it is reported that Thom Gunn saw a dictionary defintion of 'disinterested' that said it meant 'not interested' and that he didn't mind dying if the world had come to that. I know what he meant.