2022, then

 I remember once, maybe in about 1975, running in a 1500 metre race at school, not doing too bad, at least as well as could be expected going into the last lap, but I faded below the distance and afterwards the teacher said he saw my shoulders slump at the thought of keeping it up for 400 more metres.

It wouldn't do to approach 2022 in that spirit, on what is my 63rd lap, having somehow negotiated so many to arrive here apparently not doing too badly. One could, if pressed, find reasons not to be cheerful but something inherent in the very condition of being alive demands that one accentuates the positive, by which I mean the good things, not the upturn in positive tests for plague among so many people I know.

It will be doing well to catch me. I'm not saying it won't but there's some vainglorious machismo to be had for at least as long as it lasts in putting on a confident disposition and believing one's horse will win, in thinking that one's poem is a masterpiece or that nothing bad will ever happen until it proves not to be the case. We are, all of us, living on borrowed time and so can either decide to do something with it or not.

Yes, I've been reading Sartre again. Was it that obvious. The Age of Reason hasn't been half as good as Nausea but since the Portsmouth Library Service did such a brilliant job of delivering the Roads to Freedom trilogy to the local library so quickly, the least I can do is read them.

The problem with reading the novels of a philosopher, or this one in particular, is whether one can just read the story and see what happens without all the time concerning oneself with noticing when and where it is cross referencing central themes from the ontological, phenomenological or epistemological work. was that 'bad faith', is that character a 'being-in-itself' or 'a being-for-others', how much anguish does it all involve and, especially, what on earth is 'freedom'. It's a shame that the travesties of time won't allow Malcolm Muggeridge, Robin Day or Michael Parkinson, noted interviewers of their days, to sit down with Sartre and Boris Johnson and ask them what they mean by 'freedom' since they've both had so bloody much to say about it.

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I've found that WestVet magazine, the journal of the West area of the Veteran's Time Trial Association, is available on the internet and so have added a link to my contribution to it to the 'Also appearing at' section here. It is where cyclists in what is mostly the second half of their careers share stories about rides, bikes and sometimes the esoteric detail of having done a 'five' for a '25' at the age of, say, 72. That might not been mean much to anyone outside the community of veteran cyclists but it means a lot to me, having not been able to do such a thing at the age of 35. There's a lot of minor, and majorly, heroic things going on there but don't worry about them. They only do it because they want to. You have to be devoted to it to do it at all properly which is why I didn't last long at it. It was tremendous while it lasted but devotion is something I'm short on.

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Yesterday, I retrieved from the CD shelves John Potter's Secret History album of Josquin and Victoria. It's never a bad idea to check if something's better or worse than first thought it was, and, My Giddy Aunt, the Josquin Benedicta Es and his setting of Nymphes des Bois are well worth the revisit and will remain on the turntable forthwith but somehow, sadly, don't appear to be on You Tube.

Last year's Arcangelo recording of Buxtehude's op. 2 Trio Sonatas don't seem to be there, either, but God spends a few hours in his heaven attending to business when he sees fit, and at least op. 1 is there.

The B-flat major, BuxWV255, is a joyous and spectacular thing, as good as ever under the fingers of Sophie Gent, and it is with such optimism that we determinedly go into 2022,