The Endgame

Newsletter #6 - The Glasgow Gambit

This occasional newsletter looks at issues and events through the prism of the endgame. The endgame is a chess concept. In the endgame only a handful of pieces are left on the board. Few moves remain. Victory or defeat is close. Player options are limited and diminishing. Zugzwang is a particularly important aspect of the endgame. It is Zugzwang when a player’s only available moves will worsen his position.

Toronto, January 8, 2023

The Glasgow Gambit

The endgame concept implies lack of a future, or much of a future. Things are winding down. This seems like a grim idea. Maybe we should think about something more cheerful. Sunwing Airlines finally found my bags. A new French restaurant has opened across the street. There you go, I feel better already.

To think about the endgame only in a dark way ignores one of its basic characteristics. Your last moves—even the very last one—can be brilliant, satisfying, adventurous, shiny, sparkling. The endgame offers freedom. That’s because you have nothing left to lose (strangely enough, the title of my last book – order it here). You’re through clambering up the career ladder. You’ve made your peace with your family (maybe). You’ve revised your will and bought a burial plot. Now’s the time to sail single-handed across the Atlantic. (If you’re thinking about doing that, first watch Robert Redford in All is Lost.) Or go skydiving (“Texas Man Celebrates 100th Birthday by Skydiving for 1st Time Ever”). Or self-publish a novel (don’t do it—the world doesn’t want it). Or start wearing funky clothes. In the cause of freedom, replace those polo shirts and cargo pants with tight distressed jeans, slogan T-shirts, and a baseball cap worn backwards.

Which brings me to the Glasgow Gambit. (Gambit: “an action entailing a degree of risk, calculated to gain an advantage.”)

My friend Gary retired four years ago. He’d been a well-known business journalist. Gary had been divorced for years and lived alone in Toronto, more or less morosely. He had two grownup children who he saw fairly regularly. His children thought he was grumpy. He didn’t have much money.

One day Gary rang me up. “I’m moving to Glasgow,” he said.

“What? What are you talking about?”

“I’m moving to Glasgow. I’m not hanging around here, twiddling my thumbs. I don’t play golf. Should I take up knitting? Slowly rot? I need some adventure in my life.”

“But why Glasgow?”

“It’s in Europe, sort of. They speak English. It’s cheaper than London. What have I got to lose? And no, I’ve never been there.”

“How long are you staying? Where will you live?”

Gary said, “We’ll just have to see about that.”

And off he went to Glasgow.

Several months later, Gary called me to bring me up-to-date with his life. He was living in a small room in a boarding house with a shared bathroom down the corridor. He spent most evenings in a local pub and had made a couple of friends. He was dating somebody called Morag. (“Lovely Glaswegian accent,” he said.) He spent most days walking the streets, unless it was very cold or raining. He was thinking about writing a biography of John Swinton, a forgotten 19th century Scottish-born radical journalist and newspaper publisher who had lived in Canada and the United States (“fascinating guy” said Gary). God knows how Gary had stumbled across John Swinton.

“Are you happy?” I asked.

“We’ll see about that,” he said, and hung up.

Six months later Gary came back to Toronto to see his kids. We had dinner at a pub on College Street. Gary was effervescent, although it was a gloomy January. He told me that all was going well. He loved Glasgow. He’d started writing about John Swinton (“fascinating guy”). He said he was happier than he’d been in a long time. I believed him.

A week later Gary went back to Glasgow. He didn’t know when he would be back in Canada. I wished him God-speed and said I hoped we would see each other again.

The Glasgow Gambit. Good for Gary.

P.S. My latest book is Antisemitism: An ancient hatred in the age of identity politics. It will be published on March 7 in Canada and on April 4 in the United States and the United Kingdom. You can pre-order from Sutherland House or Ben McNally Books.