It Ain’t Over…

Yesterday Suella Braverman, sacked as home secretary by Rishi Sunak, sent him a scathing letter, challenging his competence and integrity with words like ‘weak, betrayal, failed, incapable’. One paragraph reads:

You have manifestly and repeatedly failed to deliver on every single one of these key policies. Either your distinctive style of government means you are incapable of doing so. Or, as I must surely conclude now, you never had any intention of keeping your promises.

This political soap opera ain’t over…   

When I hear, ‘It ain’t over till the fat lady sings’. I smile, creating my own imaginative picture – what she looks like, what she’s singing, how she’s singing…

This expression is often used in sporting contexts… football matches where the final minutes change the result of the match. It ain’t over until the final whistle.

I understand the phrase originally was ‘The opera ain’t over until the fat lady sings’, referring to a buxom soprano at the end of Wagner’s Ring Cycle…

As a child I learnt about Jesus’ birth, life, death, resurrection… and imminent return. I learnt parables about Jesus coming back ‘as a thief in the night.’ I remember singing: ‘When the roll is called up yonder I’ll be there.’ I wondered… Ham roll? Bacon roll?

This morning I read: ‘…the Lord will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God…’ It ain’t over until the trumpet of the Lord shall sound….

Last night a group of us, all older, retired folks, aware of our mortality, were talking about making the most of today’s opportunities.

I remembered the old Frank Sinatra song. ‘And now the end is near, and so I face the final curtain… It’s a theatrical picture. The final acts of a play, the final songs of a musical (with or without a buxom soprano).

I’m an actor, not the audience. I have my part to play. And it ain’t over till the final curtain.