To Weep

It's with increasing regularity that I find myself weeping at the slightest stimulus late in the evening. Not, you fear, from a deep solemnity that overcomes one during lonely nights, but rather from heroism displayed through the simplest of mediums. Tonight, for example, I've roundly doffed off a two thousand word essay on Shakespeare's great tragedy, Antony and Cleopatra, in rather a hurry, I might add, as I wished to return as quickly as possible to the whits and joys of PG Wodehouse's faux-calamity, Bertram Wooster and God, excuse me, Jeeves. How then, to finish the book and remain within any sense of contentment? Before settling down to watch Match of the Day I may have made the fatal error of rewatching Ronnie O'Sullivan's maximum break at the 2008 World Championships. That may have lubricated the ducts, as it were. And then, turning my attention to the remembrance designations that pervaded today's highlight game between the mourning Liverpudlians and the blackest of rovers, I felt all overcome. How inducing it was then, you will learn, to see the strike of the season tear through the net within seconds of the kick-off. I've vocally disliked Liverpool in the past, and I've singularly despised the player whose boot it was that pierced the ball during those opening moments, and yet I couldn't help but be reduced to a feeling of Good on you, son, though he is my senior, blurted through a fog of tears and enlightenment. High time then, you may argue, for me to arrive, full-circle, at Samuel Beckett once more, the great purveyor of melancholic delight: the great blender, as he is forthwith known. The following, following a Conradian description of his own skull, captures, what one might define, his humour:

I fell then, and brought down with me an old lady covered with spangles and lace, who must have weighed about sixteen stone. Her screams soon drew a crowd. I had high hopes she had broken her femur, old ladies break their femur easily, but not enough, not enough.