Federer
September 2nd, 2014 It’s the second week of the American Open Tennis and a year to the day since I moved ‘from the country of the well into that of the ill’ which is a garbled version of what John Donne once said about that strange transition. I knew, after a summer of breathlessness, that I’d got problems with my heart. An angiogram on this day last year revealed the worrying picture. I would need surgery, the heart was damaged – though not beyond repair: I had probably had a ‘silent’ heart attack. As soon as I heard that last I remembered where and when: in a swimming pool in an hotel in my old home town after one of the happiest nights of my life; a reunion at that hotel of the Parish Church Choir I was a member of 50 years ago. Joining up again with those companions after all those years was a bit like going to heaven. I remember thinking at the time, ‘If I die tomorrow I die happy.’ I’d gone a swim after a relatively poor night’s sleep, early the following – Sunday – morning, and had to come out of the pool with a sharp pain in my chest. I thought, ‘that’s funny,’ rested up for half an hour and carried on with the end of the reunion which involved wandering down the road where I used to live (for 25 years) and which I’d mainly avoided since my parents died. Successfully laying a ghost, in other words. I’d met up with a much loved next door neighbour, chatted without any nerves with my old childhood hero – a boy four years older than me (who told me he had had heart surgery, still an abstract concept to me) – driven back down South and went off to France the following day. It was April: enchanted April. By July I was struggling for breath and seriously sleepless. There was a long wait for surgery but, once they’d got them right, the pills started working. I took the opportunity to move house – not far, but the place is homely with views directly across the Channel to France, and – though it seemed crazy to move when so ill – I couldn’t otherwise read or write or even listen to the radio and I needed to think of something else but my illness. It’s been a successful move and I cleared a lot of stuff out. Friends helped. Just before the operation, I opened up the computer again after five months and knocked out the bulk of the second series of ‘Journal of a Joskin,’ relieved I could write again. Superstitiously I left notes for the final episode – just in case: the surgeon at St. Thomas’ had looked me in the eye and said my chance of mortality during the operation was 5-1. I’m a racing man. I’ve seen plenty of Derby winners come in at 5-1. My pal, the GP, who’d accompanied me to that interview at St. Thomas’ said, ‘Well that’s an 80% chance of success,’ but when the operation was put back a week at the last minute – I was on the South Bank with my bag packed waiting for admission at 4pm – rather than feeling miserable and frustrated, I thought, ‘Oh, great, I’ve got another week left.’ I came back home – and worked. It’s not a bad time to have a caesura in one’s life, to realise what’s important and what isn’t in the years that remain and I realise how I love sitting at the keyboard with, at best, the words flowing. At my worst with the illness – not enough oxygen being pumped round the system - I could scarcely think more than: ‘Get your teeth cleaned, go downstairs’ etc. So I’m grateful. I survived a heart attack, and a risky operation. I don’t have the stamina or strength I once had but my brain is in working order. And I have forty years of technique/trickery.
To return to the American Open (and with no invidious comparisons intended) I think of Federer. Not the player he was but still competing at the highest level, if a pace or two slower than in his prime. He loves the game. I love what I do and will settle, thank you very much, for being a cut price Federer.
To return to the American Open (and with no invidious comparisons intended) I think of Federer. Not the player he was but still competing at the highest level, if a pace or two slower than in his prime. He loves the game. I love what I do and will settle, thank you very much, for being a cut price Federer.