And such would columnists have to write for their weekly offerings if their life was as routine as mine. Yes, I have my finest booklet of poems almost but not quite in the presses, but that's routine and would have happened anyway, the highlight of any week, the joy of it, is the Times crossword on Saturday which this week was finessed with 'tondi' - I had to make sure it was a word but it had to be and so that's fine. But unless I had something really scintillating to write about, like I'd got myself a whiteboard or, like Giles Coren, I'd been at the President's Club for their bachannalian orgy, I'd have to make up chess matches I'd not taken part in. It makes for better reading than saying although you'd produced an encouraging upward surge in the turf account the previous weekend, you got worried out of all that promising good start by one or two very upsetting reverses.
I'm nothing to do with gentlemen's parties or questions of who is exploiting who when alpha males are showing off with paid young ladies in attendance but Giles made a brave stand by admitting he was there and, inevitably, condemning it. It was a good effort but, obviously, nobody in their right mind would mix with such riff-raff in the first place, the carefully worded, appalled distancing of oneself from such parties is as formulaic as 'our thoughts are with' bereaved families after any newsworthy carnage and if that particular binge had not made the headline news, nobody would have been any the wiser and Giles could have written about his children, Julian Barnes or fat people like he usually does.
Lurid scandals are becoming, or have always been, commonplace but they are like supernovas that have already happened thousands of light years away. It's only that we don't know about them yet. There are plenty to come. It never happens that, okay, we've all learned from that, it won't happen again.
On Only Connect a few weeks ago, Vicky, also Coren, the smarter one, said she liked crosswords because while one is involved in one, a sense of order prevails (not her words exactly but that's what she meant) and the chaotic world is held at bay. Anybody would surely prefer to be doing the Times crossword than go to a President's Club do, wouldn't they.
But I saw a whiteboard in One Stop on Saturday morning, they had lots of them and they were only a pound. No, I have no use for a whiteboard. But it was strangely attractive with its two little magnets and pen that velcros itself to the surface. For one pound, I deserved such a treat even if it left me with the problem of what I could write on it.
Well, top left are my chess ratings at Chess24, where I am BorderIncident, named after a 1970's star horse that got injured and didn't win the Gold Cup he might have. I'm not playing classical 15 minute games anymore because I don't want to ruin my rating of 1903, which is sensational, for me. So I play 10 minute games and am sad to say this evening lost my grip on 1800, but I'll get it back in due course. And thus it is an index of well-being. It does make a difference to how I feel about myself in a tangible and meaningful way. I enjoy talking about it in support groups.
The number in the bottom left might be the finishing positions of the last five horses I backed, but isn't. That would have some 1's in it. Then there's a reminder of the next poetry club meeting I must make a point of attending, on Muriel Rukeyser, and there's a train I need to be on. But there's plenty of space left.
At a time when the Yesterday channel have been showing Ripping Yarns, with its cast of morbid obsessives, on Sunday nights, I clearly need to record such things as local precipitation, motor vehicle performance or football scores and need to find them interesting enough to know what they are. But it's a work in progress. I'll get there. I'm sure it is the first step to genuine fulfilment.
Poetry is such a fleeting thing. Numbers is what you need.
