The Boy Least Likely To

"chance contains an element of order. like a game of tennis, chance depends on the net and lines of order to play. chance is the playful side of order. with two perfect tennis players - two totally consistent, rational, perfect players, there would be no game - no variety, no winners and losers. it is imperfection, randomness, chance that makes the game possible, makes life possible, makes happiness possible."

- luke rhinehart

i think i've invented a new game. it hasn't got a name and i haven't actually played it yet, but i think it might be fun. there aren't many rules. all you have to do is go to a train station and wait until there is a platform announcement and then you have to buy a ticket and go to the platform and get on whatever train is announced. it's probably more fun at the bigger london terminals, but you can basically play it anywhere. this morning for example, i went to the station in wendover and the first train that was announced was the one to marylebone from platform one. i wanted to get that train anyway, so it wasn't that thrilling. but then on my way home, as i was coming down the escalator into liverpool street station, there was an announcement for a train to ipswich on platform eight. if i'd been playing the game i would have had to get on that train and spend the night in ipswich. imagine that. but i wasn't playing. i hadn't even thought of it yet. so i just got the central line to oxford circus and changed there for the bakerloo line up to marylebone. but that's the game basically. i haven't really got time to play it myself at the moment, because we're recording and writing songs and that, but if anyone else wants to play it i'd love to know if it's any fun. you could spend whole days or weeks playing it. you go to your first station and you wait there until a train is announced and then you have to go to wherever that train is going, and then when you get there you have to wait for another train to be announced and then you go to wherever that train is going and so on and so on until weeks later you've been all the way round the country. or just backwards and forwards between victoria and croydon.

i'm worried that this might be a game that everyone else plays all the time but i just don't know about it. a bit like that time i invented major league baseball.

x

"it is a great disappointment. it tears at my guts, just as any defeat tears at my guts. i put myself in a position to win and couldn't do that at the last hole."

ruing. i suppose that's probably the word for it. it's something i'm often found doing. ruing things. and on sunday evening, as i watched tom watson fall to pieces in the play off of the british open i felt a painful empathy with him. more empathy than i would usually have with a fifty nine year old golfer. i guess it must have been the way he threw it all away so spectacularly after coming so close. when he missed his eight foot putt on the eighteenth hole, it reminded me of a bit in you're an animal viskovitz by alessandro boffa when he writes about how for a snail the world and life is always just inches away. that even though it seems so close those few inches always turn out to be too far because a snail moves so slowly. a snail will always lose in the race against time. i'm not comparing tom watson to a snail, but on sunday evening i guess he reminded me that life is often just inches away for humans too.

"coming here, i could have dreamt that i could win the tournament because of how i was playing and because i know how to play this golf course. that dream almost came true. i am glad this happened."

ruing isn't the same thing as regretting. i don't think so anyway. regretting is wishing things had been different. regret dwells on things. it's morose. regret beats you up over things. it never lets you move on. but being rueful isn't like that. it's just a little moment when you wonder. when you wonder what things would be like if you hadn't done the things you did. and it makes you smile. ruing isn't wishing. it's wondering. and wishing and wondering are not the same thing at all. i am quite happy ruing, and i think on sunday evening, as he walked up to the eighteenth hole for the second time, tom watson seemed to be ruing things too. ruing. i suppose that's probably the word for it.

"there is something out there. i still believe that, and it helped me along this week. it’s turnberry. i have great memories here. this would have been a great memory"

i always wanted to be a dj. on the radio. not in night clubs or anything. i never wanted to do it in front of other people. i don't want to see how disappointed everyone looks when i play something. i don't want to see them lining up bored along the walls. i don't want to see them not dancing. not enjoying themselves. not enjoying listening to the things i love. i tried it once and it was horrible. i ended up playing young folks twice just to try and keep people happy. no. i think i'd rather just imagine someone is listening even if perhaps they're not. i can fool myself quite easily. i know i only end up trying to appease everyone if i can see how they're reacting. so i think if i was a dj it would have to be on the radio where i couldn't see anyone who was listening, and i would have to have a show in the early hours of the morning. i'm too melancholic to be a breakfast dj, and i'm not lively enough after the three o clock wall to do drivetime. i'd like to be like jack killian, but without all those weirdoes calling in. just playing records.