Daily Mail, May 2, 2014
Bob Hoskins never springs to mind as one of life’s philosophers. When movie casting directors went looking for an actor to play a deep thinker, it’s unlikely Bob sprang to mind. He didn’t have the looks or the accent for it.
But what he did have was common sense, much of which he distilled into his Eleven Lessons In Life that were revealed by his daughter Rosa this week.
As a list, it may not quite rank alongside the Ten Commandments or the Seven Beatitudes delivered by Jesus on the Sermon On The Mount as a guide on how to live our lives. But as a rough guide on muddling through with good intentions, it’s not bad.
I have a daughter, too. Her name is Louise, and if she were to one day itemise the life lessons which she (and her brothers) have imbibed from me, the list wouldn’t be that far from Bob’s – albeit for those of a thinner skin than his.
Obviously, laughter would be top of my list, too. Whether it’s quietly joking at the eccentricities and unreasonable demands of those who believe they know better, or owning up to our own little vanities and absurdities, humour gets us all through the day.
Let’s face it, the human condition is often little more than small scale tragi-comedy, to which we all know the inevitable end. If you don’t believe me, just watch Rev on BBC iPlayer. You’ll laugh and cry and see yourselves there.
‘Laugh long and loud and make other people laugh,’ Bob recommended, offering a recipe long known medically for relieving pain, burning up calories, lowering the risk of heart disease and sending feelgood oxytocin charging through the bloodstream.
Whatever we do, we mustn’t take ourselves too seriously. We should take our work seriously for sure, but no-one likes a boring, pompous, self-loving, mirror gazing prig – unless as a figure of fun to be secretly laughed at. So beware: far better that others laugh with us, than at us.
Being an actor and therefore an extrovert, Bob’s advice included a degree of personal flamboyance wrapped in the armour of an armadillo, making the assumption that if someone doesn’t like you they must be either ‘stupid’, ‘blind’ or have ‘bad taste’.
That may have worked for him. But in the more tortured lonely writing profession, it occurs that if one is evidently disliked, a few ruminations as to why that might be the case, could be called for.
Yes, by all means, we shouldn’t try to be something we’re not, because we will inevitably be found to be faking and ridiculed. Instead, we should like ourselves for who we are, where we’ve come from and where we are going. I’m still trying to be the best Ray Connolly I can, although not always succeeding.
I must be honest. ‘Have I behaved like a complete prat?’ has, on occasion, been a question I’ve asked myself way into my wee small hours. And, sadly, sometimes I recognise that I have been. Must try harder next time, I think, and go to sleep.
Not that such bed time ruminations should be allowed to ruin too many good night’s rest. If we’ve fallen out with someone we love, our partner, our child, our parent or our best friend, we should always try to make up before the lights goes out. Never dwell on silent, bubbling bitterness. It’ll taste worse the next day.
And never ever, as I have sometimes done, rattle off an email or letter in a rage late at night, no matter how justified it might seem at the time. Sleep on it. Things might not always look better in the morning, but they nearly always look different.
As we all find as the years go by, life really is a mystery roller coaster ride. None of us knows what is going to happen from one day to the next, but it’s always seemed to me, and apparently did to Bob, too, that whatever we do we should do it to the best of our ability.
We shouldn’t be afraid of disappointment and use fear of failure as an excuse for not trying. We’ve only got one time on the merry-go-round of life. To miss out on any opportunity through timidity or because we feel it’s time to stop chasing rainbows, is like getting off the ride before it’s finished and then watching from the side. Since we’ve paid for it with our life’s experience, we should at least get our money’s worth.
So whatever happens, never give in. Of course success can’t be assured no matter how hard we try, and, like most people, I’ve proved that now and again. But, once we stop trying, one thing is absolutely certain. We’re going to fail.
There’s something else, too. We all like winning prizes, be it by doing something special in school or something bigger that might one day take us all the way to Buckingham Palace and a smile from the Queen. That would be a big day, no doubt. Prize days always are.
But the real fun is rarely simply in the achievement and the recognition. It’s in the doing, in the day by day journey. I’ve been lucky, I’ve been able to make my hobby my job. Those who can do this, should do it, but I understand that they will be few in number. We all have to make a living, and not many hobbies pay that well.
What none of us should do, however, is compromise the joy out of working by trying too hard to please. We should recognise our own worth and if we think we’re right we should be brave and stand up for ourselves, and not let those with the biggest voices browbeat us into submission. Because they will if we let them. They always do.
Sometimes we will inevitably come to a complete block in our road. So, what do we do when we reach an immovable object? We make a detour around it and move on to our bigger goal. There’s nearly always more than one route to where we want to go.
I sometimes think that when I was young I had a eyesight defect. Because, when I went to Paris and Florence as a young man, although I could see perfectly well, I was hardly aware of the beauty that surrounded me unless it was wearing a dress or a blouse.
Now the entire world dazzles me. Like Bob, I take photographs all the time, snapping the changing seasons in the garden, recently so heavy with wisteria, the growing grandchildren, and London’s elegant Georgian squares where once I lived seemingly with eyes closed.
Whatever we do in life we should try to catch, enjoy and preserve the moment – and each other. I spent years interviewing famous people on a tape recorder. I still have many of the recordings. But not a single one of my late mother. It never occurred to me until it was too late.
Family is, of course, everything. As Bob told his daughter Rosa: ‘Home isn’t houses. And it isn’t country. It’s family.’ He was right. Home is where you make it, where the family gathers, where the children know they can always come back to – although it may be in a quite different building from the one in which they grew up. Home is family.
I used to joke that one way to a happy life was by marrying your best friend, which is what I did when I married Plum. What I hadn’t realised was that one day our children would become our closest friends.
I like the idea of that. They have.
