Down with upped and gone

Yes, that figures! I spend all of twenty minutes writing a first entry for this new blog, The Sensible Bond, and low and behold, the darn thing just disappears, except for the title. Like a lot of things in my life at the moment. Yes, who knows why but all kinds of things and people just seem to up and disappear. 'Upped and gone like a fart in the wind', as I believe the expression has it.

I mean, what happened to British sport recently? Did someone put something in the water? Has there been a series of hidden bungs? Who knows why - yet again - but it seems like for the last ten days, world-beating athletes and champions all have, well, have upped and gone like farts in the wind. England vs Russia - match as lost as a drunken kitten. England vs South Africa - gallant defeat. Lewis Hamilton vs F1 field - engine buggered (to use a technical term).

Amazing how people can do that. Just sod off and not leave any forwarding address. Can't fathom it myself. Maybe it's something to do with the sensible bond.

My last blogging effort - theburunderthesaddle - was, I feel certain in saying, a most worthy affair. Hard studied thoughts, galvanized by friction from the French and forged under pressure in the academic steamer that is the PhD process, oozed forth from the keyboard at irregular intervals. Some were worth it. Many were not. Some were somewhere betwixt and between. Others upped and went ... etc. This blog will be something slightly different.

The Sensible Bond is quite simply where the rubber hits the road. In my life at least. I cannot do much more than that at the moment. There's no room here for upping and wenting. I'm body and soul, my feet are on earth even if my heart is in eternity. It's called being a human.

The Sensible Bond lies somewhere thereabouts. Can't say much more than that at the moment except by condemning all Heraclitan materialism (Dawkins, that's you) and Platonic dualism. We're soul and body like Aristotle said. We're body and soul like St Thomas Aquinas said. Together. The Sensible Bond. Angels with feelings, forgetting our dignity and blind to our baseness. We are all of us in the gutter looking up at the stars.

Which reminds me of a poem long since learnt and half remembered, but worth it all the same:

(only to be read with a full glass).

Twas an evening in September, as I very well remember,
I was walking down the street in drunken pride,
When my legs went all a flutter, so I lay down in the gutter,
And a pig came up and lay down by my side.

As I lay there in the gutter, thinking thoughts I could not utter,
A maiden passing by was heard to say,
"You can tell a man who boozes by the company he chooses."
And at that the pig got up and walked away.

A man should not drink to be happy; he should drink because he is happy. It's the only healthy way to drink. The same could be said of so much in life. When we grasp anything for a purpose, we find utility overtaking goodness like a rookie F1 driver trying to win a race from behind.

Let The Sensible Bond celebrate uselessness. Down with the convenient and practical. We are not here to be sensible like girl guides but to be sensible like humans. But before I come close to making a point, I'll leave it at that.

New beginnings