Close-Reading the Cliff Richard Calendar: March & April.

March.

I find it really hard to talk about this image. It’s not merely the half-hearted fist-shake which upsets me – although that’s pretty hard to bear. Nor is it the disturbing folds of leathery flesh exposed by the raffishly open collar of that race suit. No, the problem for me is in the eyes. Look at those eyes. Eternities of sorrow dream across them. Histories of grief plumb their depths. It’s at moments such as this, when we catch Cliff in a rare moment of contemplation between creating pop classics and winning the Indy 500, that we recognise him for what he is: a vast, pan-dimensional meta-deity sent here to ease our pain with no thought to his own suffering – to the galaxies he has seen born and die, or the infinite worlds of peace and wisdom he turned his back upon, or his own home, unimaginably distant, beauteous sphere populated entirely by Cliffs and Clifftinas, vibrating to the harmonies of infinite song and dance and complex fornication beneath the throbbing purple suns.

April.

But then, suddenly, it’s like March never happened. Cliff's back! The man we all know and fear is back! There before us, resplendent and unrepentant, stands a man of whom we can say with the utmost confidence that he has looked down on not just one junior cowboy, but thousands. And not just cowboys, either. Also delivery boys, postmen, tax inspectors, backing dancers, insurance salesmen, lonely policemen, vets, IT professionals, vicars in doubt over their calling and, by the time you read this, at least one thoroughbred horse.