A couple of years ago, I felt a twinge as I extended my back on a second serve. I ignored the pain and kept swinging. Big mistake. Huge. Running off injuries is a privilege enjoyed by the young. And I had just turned 30.
An hour later, frozen in the supine position, I did what any self-respecting millennial north London Jewish boy would do — I called my mother. The conversation went something like this:
“Mum, I’ve hurt my back and can’t move!” “Oh, dear. Apply some heat. Or is it ice? Charles [Dad], do we have any chicken soup in the freezer?”
And then she proceeded to tell me something that she deemed self-evidently witty but in my ibuprofen-induced haze, I found terrifying. In your thirties, she explained, your body starts to hurt but at least you know why. In your forties, it hurts and you have no idea why. In your fifties, you’ve given up documenting all the parts that hurt.
Within days the pain had mercifully faded, but the memory continued to niggle at me. I was getting old. At 30, Arsene Wenger would have restricted me to one-year contract extensions or flogged me to Manchester City. I was a third of the way through my life — if I was lucky. Was I making the most of it?
This isn’t the point of the movie where I rewatch Steve Jobs’s 2005 Stanford University commencement address, drunk in my underwear and decide to turn my life around. You know the drill: follow your dreams, find what you love and do great work. Instead, my mind turned to the Roman poet, Horace.
You’ll be aware of at least two words of his. “Carpe diem”, usually translated as “seize the day”. Odd, because “carpe” means to “pluck” or even “harvest”.
Carpe diem, therefore, is less about grasping each opportunity, but something more subtle, perhaps even sombre. I am no more a classicist than I am a farmer, but the harvest traditionally comes before the long winter.
The following line clears up any confusion: “quam minimum credula postero” — “entrust as little as possible to the future”. Isn’t Horace telling us to make the most of the present because tomorrow is uncertain? It is not quite as dark or direct as the prophet Isaiah’s “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die”, but equally it is far from the impetuousness and endless possibilities that the seizing of days suggests.
Humans are bad at prioritising the long term. That is partly why climate change is so hard to fix, even though we have the technologies to do so. But there is a danger too in the psychology of jam tomorrow.
Children get it. On a holiday in Italy many years ago, my Dad lost his bank card. He had only bank notes, and informed my sister, Sarah, that she could have an ice cream with lunch or supper, but not both. She wisely chose lunch. The card later reappeared; the second scoop was back on. That showed real pluck.
Sunak, non-doms and “smears”
Earlier this week Rishi Sunak coverage centred on his wife, Akshata Murty, daughter of an Indian billionaire. Murty, it transpires, has claimed non-domicile status, potentially enabling her to avoid paying millions in UK tax.
Things then got weirder when the Treasury declined to deny a story that during the first year of his Chancellorship, Sunak and his wife, below, held American green cards, which require holders to pay US tax on their worldwide income and declare the country to be their primary residency.
His suggestion that they are “smears” appears misjudged. Foreign-born residents are entitled to avail themselves of non-dom status to reduce their UK tax burden. Such rights do not protect politicians from accusations of selective disclosure or potential conflicts of interest.
