Wintry chatter

It was fine and sunny again today, yellowy smudges of cloud hanging almost stationary against the blue, fragile sunlight and the wintry chatter of starlings in the trees. Looking out into the garden, at the clear skies, it wasn’t Christmas at all.

Mum, Dad and Andrew went out for a walk around Knowlesbeck and I stayed in to listen to a historic Easterby Athletic victory at top-of-the-table Hollin End at Reedshaw Lane. With just three minutes to go Newlands put Athletic ahead and for the last few minutes the tension was unbearable: I hopped about with my fingers crossed, unable to believe we were winning. But win we did!

Dad invited Mr. Tillotson across for dinner and he told us of his days as an Athletic fan before the First World War, when he and his mates would climb over the wall into the Three Locks Road side of the ground. He remembers nothing of the matches, but can still recall the names of some of the players (Arthur Briggs, etc.).

Reading Wilson all evening: “Our lives consist of a clash between two visions: our vision of . . . inner freedom, and our vision of contingency; our intuition of freedom and power, and our everyday feeling of limitation and boredom. The ‘new existentialism’ . . . helps to reveal how the spirit of freedom is trapped and destroyed; it uncovers the complexities and safety devices in which freedom dissipates itself. It suggests mental disciplines through which this waste of freedom can be averted.”

Perhaps I see the planned ‘Grey Triangle’ project in a newer perspective, as a sort of fresh regime to focus my mind on the necessary job of ‘moving forward.’ I need to impose these limits on my self, to tighten things up. It’s the Act I need. The search may be fruitless and I may be going about it the wrong way completely but I have to try.

Freedom through purpose . . .