The Times Companion to 2017

by Ian Brunskill

  It is not going to come to that. There are infinite new ways we can think of to fulfil each other’s needs and desires in exchange for reward. Look at the way in which modernity’s spectacular productivity has allowed the revival of crafts or the resurgence in live performance.

  And in the unlikely event that this end point were ever reached, so what? A world in which machines do literally everything we can ever think of needing done (“Take me to Mars, Hal, and on the way rewrite Shakespeare as rap”) is a world in which we can spend our entire time consuming the products of those machines’ work. After all, the purpose of all work is consumption, as Adam Smith nearly said. The economist Tim Worstall puts it this way: “There will continue to be jobs for humans as long as there are unsatisfied human wants and desires. Once all of those are satisfied then jobs don’t matter, do they?”

  We are sharing out less work already. In 1856 an average British man worked 149,700 hours over his lifetime. By 1981 that had dropped to 88,000 hours — despite the fact that he lived much longer. He now spent more time in education, on holiday, in retirement or leaving work early. In 1960 a British worker spent nearly 12 per cent of his or her life at work; by 2010 that number had dropped to less than 9 per cent (and I bet he or she spends some of the “work” time on home life, reading emails, paying bills).

  The final argument of the pessimists is that automation is “hollowing out” the workforce by replacing the jobs of the middle-skill professions, so we will be left with a world of hedge-fund managers and their maids. There have been some disproportionate losses of middle-income jobs in the US and Europe since 1980, but as the MIT economist David Autor argues, it’s as much to do with competition from China as with automation per se. You cannot outsource maids. And he thinks it is running out of steam anyway.

  Journalists, he says, “tend to overstate the extent of machine substitution for human labour and ignore the strong complementarities between automation and labour that increase productivity, raise earnings, and augment demand for labour”.

  Cheer up. Far from a mass of unemployed Morlocks living miserably poor lives while the digital Eloi monopolise the few well-paid jobs, automation is granting us ever more time, as well as more goods and services.

  WINTER

  GAME’S SOUL IS NOT AT LORD’S. IT IS HERE

  Mike Atherton, Mumbai

  DECEMBER 8 2016

  IT CALLS ITSELF the home of cricket, by Twitter handle and common consent, but it isn’t really. Not when there are 12ft gates and a huge brick wall keeping the public at bay, and when you need the fattest of wallets to watch an international match there — if you can get hold of a ticket — or buy a beer or sandwich. It’s a commercial powerhouse, a successful brand and, of course, it has the history, but Lord’s is not the home of cricket.

  South Mumbai is about as close as you get to the heart and soul of the game. A mile or two square, from the pukka gymkhanas at the north end of Marine Drive to the Oval Maidan, just inland from the southern tip of it at Nariman Point. An area that teems with cricketing history, has produced some of the greatest players, and remains home to the ordinary cricketer, no matter how wealthy or privileged, how poor or unconnected.

  Let’s head out from the Trident hotel, then, where both sets of players are staying, along with tour groups and assorted journalists, pausing briefly to gaze out beyond Chowpatty Beach to the swanky Malabar Hill, the birthplace of one of the greatest England captains, Douglas Jardine. (What tactics would Jardine devise for Virat Kohli?) It’s early, barely light, but the honking of the cars has already begun, the kites are flying overhead and the walkers and runners are out, using the three-mile stretch along Marine Drive to keep their lungs in decent order, not always easy in Mumbai.

  We’ll turn right, past the charmless Air India building, heading down through a nondescript quarter dominated by dreary government constructs and on towards the first great expanse, the Oval Maidan.

  It’s Sunday morning and the market traders are setting up their stalls, the street-food sellers are firing up their equipment, ready to prepare the vada pavs, misal pavs, dhalpuri, bhelpuri, idlis and all manner of biscuits and teas. A handful of boys sprint past us, dragging their cricket bags along the floor, sturdy wooden bats to hand. They are dressed in coloureds, with their names on their backs, and they are in a hurry.

  Ahead of us and to our left stretches the Oval Maidan, named because of its shape, which is actually more of a rectangle, more than 20 acres, running north–south, and already teeming with players of all ages, all abilities, crammed so close together you wonder how matches are regulated, and why there are not more injuries. This is the prettiest of the maidans, with the University of Mumbai and the great Rajabai Tower and the ornate High Court framing one side, and palm trees shading the circumference.

  Around the edges, informal knockabouts are happening; on the main parts, where there are cut pitches, more formal matches are taking place. The standard varies: it is already warm, the early morning sun has burnt off the haze and the dew, and so it is no place for a fast bowler. Some fancy their chances, and they chuck rather than bowl the ball, but mainly wiry arms and flexible wrists send the ball spinning towards the batsmen. Even here, Indian spinners look more natural, more born to it, less rigid and manufactured. It is in the blood.

  What are a young cricketer’s needs? Sun and space, mainly. Cricket on the maidans bursts into life after the monsoon rains give way, although there is the Kanga League that is played through rain and shine. With sun and space, though, often the most rudimentary pitches and equipment will suffice. From the townships of South Africa to the beaches of the Caribbean, the back alleys of Dhaka to these maidans, cricketers emerge, self-taught and self-motivated.

  We’re walking north now, staying on the western side of the Oval Maidan, so that we can peek through the railings at the matches taking place, maintaining the view offered by the university and High Court in the background, and occasionally stooping to throw back a ball that has come through. At the end, instead of carrying straight on to the next green expanse, we’ll take a short detour left, past the Oxford bookstore, and towards the old Brabourne Stadium, home to the Cricket Club of India, pentangular tournaments between 1937–46 and Test matches in Mumbai regularly until 1973, when the Wankhede Stadium supplanted it.

  It’s a good place to stop, sit in one of the planter chairs on the veranda, grab a cool drink and soak in the atmosphere of an old colonial-type club, with its swimming pool, billiards room, library and lush green outfield. The most recent time England played a Test there was almost 44 years ago, when they were plundered by Farokh Engineer, who scored what was, for the time, a rapid hundred. Engineer was one of four players from the Parsee Cyclists Cricket Club who once played in the same Test team for India in 1961 and their home, the Azad Maidan, is our next port of call.

  Up towards the Central Telegraph Office, then, turning left on Mahatma Gandhi Road and towards the Cross Maidan, so named for the cross, situated at its north end, that still attracts religious devotees, but this morning is home to a football match, not cricket. On then, quickly, heading north until we get to a crossroads where we can turn in and on to a path that heads through the Azad Maidan. We are struck immediately by the contrast: one genteel game at the Bombay Gymkhana, with its green-baize outfield, to our right, and hundreds of matches being played on the scrub of the Azad Maidan to our left.

  The black and gold-coloured flag is fluttering above the Bombay Gymkhana pavilion, a magnificent building that stretches along almost one entire side of the ground. The Bombay Gymkhana was home to the first Test in India, in 1933, and with government edicts dictating that no wall or boundary can surround the western side, it hasn’t changed that much in appearance. It is still exclusive, despite the flimsy rope and pathway, which are the only things that separate it from the democratic happenings on the Azad Maidan.

  Azad means free in Persian, and this ground is host to 22 clubs, with their tiny, canvas-covered make
shift pavilions, and numerous other games after hours, when anyone can use its vast expanse. Of all the maidans, this is perhaps the most famous as a result of the gluttonous feats of run-scoring in school matches. It was here that Sachin Tendulkar and Vinod Kambli put on a 664-run stand in a Harris schools’ competition almost 30 years ago. In his autobiography, Tendulkar relates that his scores in the 1987–88 Harris Shield quarter-final, semi-final and final were 207 not out, 326 not out and 346 not out. After his effort in the semi-final, he wandered across to the other end of the maidan and played in another match, scoring 178 not out.

  He would have needed some food and drink after that, and so do we, so we’ll retrace our steps and head down one of the food lanes that bisects the Azad Maidan and the Cross Maidan. If you’re brave, you can give the street food a go — I’ll leave you to it. We’re close to the Wankhede Stadium now, so close that on thrumming nights in the IPL, or after the World Cup final here in 2011, the noise would have carried to these neighbourhoods. International cricket, with its facilities, superstars and wealth, is so close but so far away.

  Because of the railway line, we’ll have to turn left, head back to Churchgate and get on to Marine Drive again, wander past the InterContinental hotel, which has one of the best rooftop bars, and be guided by the floodlights of the stadium, looming before us. We’ll pass the Brabourne again, then turn right and head through the Vinoo Mankad gates — Mankad being far from Mumbai’s most celebrated cricketing son, but the one whose name is still given to a cricketing act — and walk down towards the Vijay Merchant pavilion.

  I’ve got an accreditation, so I’m going to leave you now, and head out on to the middle where the groundsman is finalising his preparations for the Test pitch and take a peek. Away to the left is the Sachin Tendulkar stand and opposite that the Sunil Gavaskar pavilion, the two most revered members of the Mumbai school of batting. However, neither averages as many in first-class cricket as its founding father, Merchant, who, with an average of 71.64, stands behind only Donald Bradman.

  Many of the greats started on the maidans before graduating to international cricket at Gymkhana, then the Brabourne and now the Wankhede — a seamless link. It’s all there, within a morning’s walk. Follow that path and you’ll feel closer to the heart and soul of the game than anywhere else.

  CONFESSIONS OF A MIDDLE-AGED MAN

  Jonathan Gershfield

  DECEMBER 10 2016

  PETER SITS DOWN in the chair next to mine, looking a little hesitant. “Before we start,” he says. “I need to ask you a question. Would you feel comfortable if a trainee nurse sits in on our session?” He clears his throat. “A male nurse, of course.”

  Now, I’d had intimate medicals before. Plenty of them. And with 60 years of prodding and poking behind me (and in front), I’m quite laissez faire these days. But this is new territory for me. Because I’m here at the urology clinic for my induction. My injection-therapy induction. To treat the “dysfunction” I’d experienced since parting company with my prostate six months earlier.

  OK, if you want me to spell it out — my “erectile dysfunction”.

  The session will involve an injection and, with any luck, an erection — my first in six months. Now, an erection is a rather personal condition and, call me old-fashioned, until today I’d only shared mine with one person at a time. And that person, invariably female and invariably someone with whom I have been in a relationship, has been generally prepared to bare all, too — them’s the rules. So flaunting my tumescence in the presence of not one but two total strangers, both fully dressed and fully male, is not something I’m ever going to “feel comfortable” about.

  On the other hand, I’m a Brit. So I can usually muster a stiff upper lip, even if other parts of my anatomy remain temporarily flaccid.

  “Of course,” I say, doing my best to put the poor man at ease with a genial sweep of my hand and a sanguine smile. “No problem.”

  Peter thanks me and opens the door. An earnest young man shuffles in, introduces himself a little stiffly (no doubt there’s another word, but that’s the one that infiltrates my consciousness) and pulls up a chair to make a cosy threesome.

  Peter outlines how the injection will work. Perhaps because of the worldly air I’m trying to adopt, he assumes prior knowledge. But ever since my first brush with a vaccination at the age of four, when I’d bolted, terrified, out of the doctor’s surgery and into the high street with my ageing GP and my hysterical mother in hot pursuit, I’d studiously avoided ever eyeing a needle. Or an episode of Holby City come to that. So I haven’t a clue how to do it.

  We go back to first principles. How to break off the ampoule. How to draw the solution into the syringe with the long needle. How to expunge the air bubbles. How to switch needles. And finally, how to inject. To demonstrate, Peter opens a drawer and produces — arrgghh! — a large fibreglass penis. I shaft uneasily in my chair. Shift, I mean, shift. (My brain’s really messin’ with me now.)

  Then he asks if I’m ready. “Sure,” I lie. I am to inject myself, it seems, under Peter’s watchful eye. And the trainee’s, of course. Four watchful eyes, peering unblinkingly at my privates. I carefully prepare the instruments of torture. But as I grip the ampoule and draw the solution into the syringe, the needle jolts and ( just like in the fairytale) pricks — I mean stabs — the tip of my finger. Blood oozes out and the trainee reaches for a plaster, visibly relieved to have a role beyond that of spectator.

  The moment is a rude awakening. The last thing you’d want is to put one of those things anywhere near a sensitive area, let alone an erogenous one. Yet that is precisely what I have to do. And sure enough, with the needle now locked and loaded, Peter gestures to the bed. “You’ll be more comfortable there,” he says. I wouldn’t bank on it.

  With my sanguine smile now more of a hardened — fixed, I mean — grimace, I duly lower my kecks to half-mast, perch on the edge of the bed and take myself in hand. I glance up at those four watchful eyes. The trainee’s fresh face is now as red as a radish as Peter points to the target.

  My hand is trembling, furiously, like a leaf with the DTs. No wonder surgeons don’t operate on themselves. I take a deep breath to steady my nerves, take aim … and fire. In it goes, first the needle, then the solution …

  I am all set to swear like the mother of all mothers in childbirth, but the procedure is amazingly painless. Peter congratulates me (On what? Not swearing? Not bolting for the high street? Not hitting a main artery?) and says they’ll leave the room so I can massage myself in private.

  Massage myself? There’s no mention of that in the booklet.

  “We’ll be back in 15 minutes,” he says. “We should have a result by then.”

  “Touch wood,” I say, instantly regretting it.

  I shuffle over to the window to make sure the venetians are fully closed. Then I text Cathy. “OMG. You’ll never guess what I’m doing.” She guesses. “I hope you’re thinking of me,” she texts back.

  In all honesty it’s hard — I mean difficult — to think of anything even mildly erotic in this brightly lit, clinical room. If TripAdvisor had a page on the subject, I’d suggest Barry White, scented candles, internet access. Although Hippocrates might not approve.

  Within minutes there’s a stirring, like a slowly rising soufflé or a cobra charmed from its dormancy. By the time they return, I’m fully charged. Peter nods his approval, like a queen proudly inspecting her Home Guard, and produces a plastic ruler, mounted with four rubber buttons. For a moment I wonder if I’m meant to kneel while he places it on my shoulder, or stand so he can pin it to my lapel like a medal. But he explains that it’s merely a way to measure the strength of my erection. I press No 3: “Firm enough for penetration but not completely hard.” That’ll do for starters. Peter’s compliments are tempered with a health warning, however. If it lasts more than one hour, I’m to vigorously run up and down some stairs. Two hours, take a cold shower. Three, an ice pack. Four, call an ambulance.

>   With those cautions ringing in my ear, I quickly get dressed, take my injection kits, say goodbye to the two men with whom I now feel a strange connection and head out towards the Tube, grateful that I had the foresight to wear boxers and loose-fitting trousers.

  But if that standout moment marked the end of a turbulent year, this is how it had all started …

  The silence is suffocating.

  We’re driving back from a “make or break” weekend in the New Forest and … let’s just say it wasn’t a “make”. In all honesty, if months of counselling couldn’t save our marriage, then a weekend away with the ponies was never likely to. So now there really is nothing more to say. All the home truths and dirty washing have been aired, and wisps of thin grey smoke are the only signs of life in the tangled wreckage of our 30 years together. We sit in silence in the bank-holiday traffic. The engine’s thrum and the air-con’s whirr form a sorry soundtrack to what had once been an extremely happy union, full of love and hope and joy.

  So how did it all go wrong? The stresses of urban living? The strains of work-life balance? The challenge of bringing up kids? Or is it merely that human beings were never designed for such long-term arrangements.

  I can’t take the suffocating silence. I switch on the radio. On most other days Adele would have been a welcome accompaniment to our journey home. But right now my missus and I would rather listen to the sound of our own fingernails scouring a blackboard.

  Tears are gonna fall, rolling in the deep …

  We sit stony-faced for the first few bars. I am the first to blink, switching over to a radio sitcom. An audience guffaws. That’s more like it. Laughter is the best medicine. Except there’s nothing more profoundly irritating than guffawing when the jokes aren’t funny. Not to us they aren’t anyway, not today.