#clive james

[scribl-oi]

DAMON HILL in THE CLIVE JAMES SHOW || 1997

[racingghost]

Murray Walker telling half of the grid that Michael Schumacher could wipe the floor with them, right to their faces, will never not be funny [x]

__

Clive James: In the presence of all these drivers, you haven't mentioned the one guy who must be haunting all of them, and that's Schumacher.

Murray: Simply because he's not here, but...

Clive: Well...

Murray: Clive, if Schumacher is in a Ferrari this year, which is as good as he deserves it to be, none of those chaps behind me will see which way he went.

[themaninthegreenshirt]

"Among artists without talent Marxism will always be popular, since it enables them to blame society for the fact that nobody wants to hear what they have to say."

Clive James

[hanssloane]

Japanese Maple by Clive James

[maturemenoftvandfilms]

Before he passed away did writer/TV personality Clive James make you a little tingly in your nether regions? He certainly made me want to spend half my life in bed with him….maybe more than half my life.

-I remember seeing him somewhere and did take a liking to him.

[davidhudson]

Clive James, October 7, 1939 – November 24, 2019.

1981 photo by Mike Maloney.

[bright-eyed]

Sentenced to Life

by Clive James

Sentenced to life, I sleep face-up as though Ice-bound, lest I should cough the night away, And when I walk the mile to town, I show The right technique for wading through deep clay. A sad man, sorrier than he can say.

But surely not so guilty he should die Each day from knowing that his race is run: My sin was to be faithless. I would lie As if I could be true to everyone At once, and all the damage that was done

Was in the name of love, or so I thought. I might have met my death believing this, But no, there was a lesson to be taught. Now, not just old, but ill, with much amiss, I see things with a whole new emphasis.

My daughter’s garden has a goldfish pool With six fish, each a little finger long. I stand and watch them following their rule Of never touching, never going wrong: Trajectories as perfect as plain song.

Once, I would not have noticed; nor have known The name for Japanese anemones, So pale, so frail. But now I catch the tone Of leaves. No birds can touch down in the trees Without my seeing them. I count the bees.

Even my memories are clearly seen: Whence comes the answer if I’m told I must Be aching for my homeland. Had I been Dulled in the brain to match my lungs of dust There’d be no recollection I could trust.

Yet I, despite my guilt, despite my grief, Watch the Pacific sunset, heaven sent, In glowing colours and in sharp relief, Painting the white clouds when the day is spent, As if it were my will and testament – ​ As if my first impressions were my last, And time had only made them more defined, Now I am weak. The sky is overcast Here in the English autumn, but my mind Basks in the light I never left behind.

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Devotees who say that À la recherche du temps perdu reminds them of a cathedral should be asked which cathedral they mean. It reminds me of a sandcastle that the tide reached before its obsessed constructor could finish it; but he knew that would happen, or else why build it on a beach?

- Clive James