Better to Dream Than to Be Woke

Gstaad—I need it like Boris needs a bleach job. Another birthday, that is. Birthdays tend to make one’s life pass before him in a flash. As it does, I imagine, while facing a firing squad, or a samurai intending harm. I mention the latter because I recently dreamed of living in a feudal society where samurai ruled supreme. And how happy I was until I woke up. Now soulless bureaucrats rule instead of samurai, and it makes for a crappier world.

Looking back—not much point in looking ahead, is there?—I regret some things, like missing an education in the classics. But most of all, I should have gone and lived in Japan when I was young. I began karate training 55 years ago and have never missed a day except when injured. The Japanese I trained with were brave and very polite, loved the past, and honored their ancestors. And most of them yearned for a feudal system, like I do. Multiculturalism in Japan was something to scare tiny misbehaving children with. Now it’s too late, but I shall be visiting this year and have a fight arranged with Master Wada, in his late 60s and also looking forward to it. Amazon.com Gift Card i... Check Amazon for Pricing.

But for the moment I think back of absent friends like Nick Scott, and worry about the health of Commodore Tim Hoare, and have come to the conclusion that Jeremy Clarke is very wise to choose to live in a cave, as the whole place is about to be overrun by the barbarians. (It’s the last place they’d wish to return to.) Absent friends are often on one’s mind as the years roll by. No use listing them, this space would be one long name-drop, but it’s funny how they remain active in one’s dreams. Especially just before dawn and the wake-up call. The recent dream I previously mentioned about a feudal society was extremely vivid. It included a Spartan part—both my maternal grandparents were Spartans and had sent five sons to the front the day after war was declared in 1940. Although I revered Sparta as a child, I followed an Athenian way of life. Alcibiades was and is my hero, and the all-knowing professor Peter Jones will guess why: The individual is more important than the state—the basis of conservative thought, I suppose. I used the conservative creed for different purposes, to amuse and enjoy myself.

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