Author: Mark Hannam

In parks there are more runners and in pools there are more swimmers, sales of new gym memberships are up and sales of fast food are down.  I have no data to support these claims, but intuitively they seem plausible descriptions of behavioural trends during the first half of January in London.  The start of a the new year provides us all with the opportunity to reset our lives, trying a little harder to be the people we would like to be.  We want to be healthier and more focused on the important things of life.  We want to stop giving in to temptation and being distracted by ephemera.  This year, we say to ourselves, I resolve … 

By mid-February, things might seem different.  Doing what we consider to be in our long-term best interest often turns out to be more costly, more tiring, and, perhaps most importantly, less fun than just doing what seems most desirable right now, even when we know that much of the appeal of the immediate pleasure is likely to be a gross overestimation.  I have always enjoyed the saying, with regard to the drinking of cocktails:  One is good / Two is better / Three is too many / Four is not enough.  I recently came across an improved version, from Dorothy Parker: I like to have a martini / Two at the very most / After three I’m under the table / After four I’m under my host.   We all know how quickly alcohol weakens our resolve, but even for the sober among us there will be something which functions in our lives as the “third martin”, the point at which our resolve fails us and we start to do the things we know that we should not do.

Continue reading “Three martinis”

According to Matthew they came from the east, looking for a newly born king.  Neither Mark nor John say anything about the birth, whereas Luke, who does, mentions only shepherds and angels.  Traditionally they have been called wise men, and sometimes magi, a name which refers specifically to an ancient Persian priestly cast, but which has come to be used more generally to mean someone skilled in Oriental astrology and magic, which everywhere were the earliest forms of catalogued human knowledge.  Some think they might have been Zoroastrians. 

In the Western Christian tradition they were three in number primarily, it seems, because Matthew said that they brought with them three gifts, and for some reason the early Western church thought that wise Eastern men could manage one and only one present each.  In the Eastern Christian tradition they were twelve in number, which seems suspiciously like one wise man for each of the days between the date on which the birth was celebrated (25 December) and the date on which their arrival at the scene of the birth was celebrated (6 January).  Around three hundred years after they made their famous journey, the church upgraded them from magi to kings, reflecting no doubt a greater willingness among church leaders to defer to power rather than wisdom.  Around five hundred years after that, their names were first recorded in the text known as the Excerpta Latina barbari: Balthasar (from Arabia or Ethiopia), Melchior (from Persia), and Gaspar (from India). 

Continue reading “Comets”

I greatly enjoy reading long, multi-volume, immersive novels: Marcel Proust – bien sür – , Elena Ferrante, and Thomas Mann.  I also enjoy novellas, short books of fiction that might occupy around one hundred pages or less: Stefan Zweig – natürlich – , Françoise Sagan, and, again, Thomas Mann.  Novellas are not so much immersive as paddling; but, despite their brevity, at their best they clearly signal something important about life.  They have one point to make and they make it speedily.

Last year, a good friend gave me two novellas by Claire Keegan, a contemporary Irish writer.  Although I read a reasonable amount of Irish fiction, I had not come across her work previously.  When I started Small Things Like These (2022), I realised immediately that her writing was of the highest quality, as good as John McGahern (who is very, very good); and that the story she told was both difficult and important.  Subsequently, I have read two more of her books, and discovered that they each share the rare quality of great literature, the ability to capture with some precision the complexities and tensions within normal human relationships, and the moral dilemmas that arise in our everyday lives. 

Continue reading “Small things”

I enjoy watching cricket, particularly the long-form version of the game, in which a match can last for up to five days.  The short-form variant – in which each side bats for a set number of overs (or balls) – lasts only for a few hours, and while it can be exciting, it tends to be less engrossing, less subtle, less amenable to connoisseurship.  Just as I prefer the Grand Tours to velodrome cycle-racing, and the 10,000m to the 100m on the athletics track, so too I prefer Test Matches to T20 cricket games, mostly because the extended forms of each of these sports allows for lengthier and more sophisticated pleasures.  Why rush such a good thing?

In the past two-and-a-half years, the English cricket team have introduced certain elements of short-form tactics into the longer-form version of the game.  The results have been impressive.  In the first year of this new style, the English team scored at a rate of 4.76 runs per over, whereas all other of the eight full Test Match nations scored at rates of between 3.03 and 3.56 runs per over.  (England’s run rate in their twelve games prior to the change in style was 2.97).  This new run rate is also the highest in cricket history – surpassing the 4.12 achieved by the Australians in 2003, which cricket aficionados have long considered to be exceptional.    Although England have just lost a three-match Test series in Pakistan, they won the first game in impressive fashion, scoring 823 runs in their first innings, their highest total since 1938.  Their improved performance is due to both to the material increase in their run rate per over, as well as high individual scores throughout the team, for not only their specialist batters, but also their bowlers and wicket-keeper are regularly making plenty of runs. 

Continue reading “Cricket lessons”

There is a deservedly famous scene early in the film Annie Hall, in which Woody Allen and Dianne Keaton, are waiting in line to see a movie.  Behind them in the queue a man noisily opines on the demerits of the films of Frederico Fellini and the ideas of Marshal McLuhan.  When Woody challenges him about his loudness and his erroneous views, he responds by saying that he teaches classes on “TV, Media and Culture” at Columbia University.  At which point, Woody brings Marshal McLuhan himself on-screen, who then confirms that Woody is right and the opiniated academic is wrong.  “Boy, if life were only like this,” says Woody, direct to the camera. 

I should confess that on a number of occasions – during interminable and unwinnable arguments about the correct interpretation of some author’s or some artist’s work, or about the best explanation for an historical event or an economic process, or about the real meaning of an idea or concept in philosophy – I have wished to be in a similar situation.  Would it not be truly wonderful if the person in the world most authoritative on the topic of the argument in question, just happened to be standing nearby and willingly and decisively intervened in the argument, telling my interlocutor that they were mistaken and that I was right.  It is not just the wish to be proved right, but also the wish for there to be a right answer that is instantly and conclusively available, that makes this thought so wonderful. 

Continue reading “Cometh the hour …”