I wrote an essay thirty-two years ago which at ninety still has not lost its meaning.
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The years, as they tend to do, have crept up secretly and suddenly I find I am 58. That means, of course, that as a sportsman, at least in the fast games – I don’t count bowls or croquet or snooker or even golf – one’s day in the sun are finished. No great harm or humiliation in that: after all, the voice of reason whispers soothingly in one’s ear, you once had your winning years – the time has long come when you must expect to lose. And it is true, of course. The suppleness has gone. The quickness is no longer there. That snap of the reflexes, the eagerness that comes with youth and fitness, they have gone now, fleeting as the dew that glistens on a spider’s web at morning. And so now the other men you play will always be too young, too strong, too fit, too fast, too good. Resignation to one’s fate must now be the only feeling. And yet, it is not quite like that. It is still not so. Losing is still hard, even if it is a minor inter-club tennis doubles match.