This week, I proudly saw my son performing at the Oxford Playhouse in a newly updated English translation of Chekhov’s The Seagull . I’ve never read Chekhov, so my son’s (quite brillaint) acting is proving an education. Good theatre is timeless because it tells us something about humanity that we have a proclivity to forget, avoid or hide from. When The Seagull premiered in 1896, it was a disaster. Audiences disparaged its unconventional form, with its emphasis on subtext and insinuation over literalism. What is clear is that every character in the play is unhappy. It’s a series of portraits of the different ways we struggle emotionally. There is the grinding misery of poverty and physical hardship, which attracts zero sympathy (unromantic psychological pain). The neurotic is consumed by what might go wrong; the narcissist by the inconvenient truth that other people have lives of their own; the melancholic remains blighted by sadness despite success. Misery takes the form of ...
The other day, someone said to me: “I couldn’t do what you’re doing. I need to be busy. I need to be doing things.” Fair enough. Each to their own. But busyness feels like a trap that I want to use this year to wriggle free from. I’m going to give life in the slow lane a whirl. There’s a concept in running called periodisation. You train hard for a block of weeks, then ease back, allowing your body to recover and adapt. The fitness gains don’t come just from the training itself, but from giving your body time to absorb the work. Nature understands this. Fields lie fallow. Heathland is burned to create the conditions for new growth. Seasons turn. Things die back, endings happen, and space opens up for something new. So that’s the idea for my year out: to make some space, see the world from different vantage points and replenish my stores of energy and enthusiasm. I’m feeling excited. Here’s a sketch for the year ahead Chapter one: The running monk First up, a mo...