High life | 25 August 2016

OK sports fans, the Games are over, Uncle Sam and Britain hit pay dirt, and the prettiest girl of the Olympics was Morgan Lake, a black Brit high jumper who wins the High life gold medal for looks and proper demeanour.

Here’s a tip for ambitious mothers: take a lesson from Morgan Lake — the name is perfect, no agent could have made it up — and instead of sending your daughters to Hollywood, where they’re more likely to end up as high-class hookers, you should guide them towards athletics and the high jump. Morgan Lake is café au lait, has a perfect body, and a very sweet innocent face. She didn’t place but was in the finals, having jumped over one meter ninety-four. I know nothing about her except that she’s 19, and what I saw of her on the TV screen.

What was that Noël Coward song about putting your daughter on the stage? If she looks like Morgan, let her be a high jumper, so eat your heart out Jessica Raine, remember her? (I’m over her.) Why is it that grace and innocence makes my knees go weak? I suppose it is because I have a view of the fairer sex more common in an era more romantic than the present. I feel more alive in the presence of beauty, but I also feel longing, both spiritual and physical. But beauty has been downgraded these last 50 years. Beautiful buildings are no longer built, just ugly, modern so-called utilitarian ones, and I’m not sure about the last one. Boats are now extremely ungraceful and downright unshapely — they either look like insects or like refrigerators on steroids. Once upon a time there was nothing more elegant or beautiful than sailing boats with overhangs on their bows and sterns.