Almost

 

The graph of my adventures in Rapid (10 mins each) Chess at Lichess shows how exciting it was here last week, reaching a rating of 1987, only one win, or two, from an all-time high and, realistically, three from breaking the 2000 barrier. But having got close, once one's missed it, one goes into freefall and goes from being unplayable to being unable to play. I've stabilized back down at 1935 now, still in the Top 12% of people who've ever played there, which presumably includes a wedge of people who tried, lost and gave up that make the rest look better than they are but they were people who saw fit to give it a go. 1987 had me in the top 8%.

And so I'll wait for months for the next alignment of planets to bring about another surge in form and if I ever achieve 2000, I'll park it and play in some other time limit so as never to  lose it.

--

Nobody wrote masterpieces all the time. Dr. Johnson's 'bad book' is The Complete English Poems.

No doubt brilliant at the time and quite possibly the equal of Pope and Dryden but how would we know, or care. We don't do poetry like thay did it in the C18th anymore and even that which was regarded as the finest of the period looks stilted and dull now, at least to me.

I have recorded Frank Skinner's programme on Pope on Sky Arts and am glad to give him as many chances as he needs but I don't think I'm ever going to be convinced. I wasn't expecting too much from Rasselas and was impressed. I thought I'd better have the Johnson poems if only to make the shelf look complete but that's all it does. That doesn't come as a surprise.

It's not Johnson's fault that he wrote in the prevailing way. That's about all one can do. But neither is it entirely the result of my increasingly deep resistance to being impressed by poetry. I can't think that I'd have taken the point even when I thought it was my job to appreciate poetry and not its job to persuade me that it matters.