Read, Read, Read.

I once had a teaching colleague who put up an excellent poster outside his classroom. The title was something like “The ten rules for Success’. #1 was ‘Read’ and so were the rest. The one word “Read” was the only word printed for all ten. Obviously it must have struck a chord with me because it is one of the few motivational banners that I remember after many, many years in the classroom. The reason that I mention this here is that I am concerned that I, who am an avid reader, am finding myself missing important information when I read an instructional booklet or even an email or text. I am, Dear Reader, having to return to these examples a few times before I fully understand what is required. Is it because I am 71 years old? Was I always like this? It is probably a mixture of both but I do hope it is not the result of a shortened concentration and focus because of too much screen time. That would be a smack in the ego. The reason that I am bringing this up now is that recently our daughter, Alison, sent me this little gem:-

“Knowledge is power. France is bacon.”

I laughed like a drain. I  did not take it as true. Then I would be storming through ‘Google’ trying to find out why France is famous for its bacon. Where I grew up the best bacon was Danish. “Denmark is bacon” makes perfect sense to me. I remember the French onion man coming around on his bicycle every year so “France is onion” would have a Gallic shrug des epaules from me. Substitute ‘the Louvre’, ‘Notre Dame’, the ‘Eiffel Tower’ or ‘Le Tour” and I’m crossing La Manche between Dover and Calais with a pretty good idea of what I’m getting into. But bacon! Nope, I am lost. My image of the French countryside is not one of ‘cochons’ nosing their way about French farmyards waiting for ‘Le Francais Cochon Marketing Board’ coming along for the slaughter. Vin Rouge, berets, Edith Piaf, Antoine Dupont, certainly make me a Francophile. Even Charles De Gaulle telling we Brits ‘Non’ regarding ‘La Marche Commune’ back in the day was a good lesson, indeed at the time most Brits would have understood fully if the quote had been “France is General De Gaulle”. (Brexit proved him prescient!)

So I can imagine some conscientious reader spending some time trying to find out why France should be a hub for bacon. He or she would learn a great deal about France on their journey. They might consider it time wasted. I wouldn’t. You see, Friends, one of the reasons that I was such a terrible student at school and then at Teacher’s Training College was that I was always diverted from the task at hand. (Might have been a smidge lazy too! ‘Goals’ were only attainable on the football field.).Always there was something tangential to my studies. For instance, I would learn that it takes a man in a tweed suit five and a half seconds to fall from the top of the Empire State Building to the ground or some such nonsense. So I became a mine of useless information, a la the actor Michael Caine, none of which was relevant to my thesis on the origins of World War II, let’s say. Still to this day I have difficulty focussing on instructional videos. As a child it always seemed to be the reverse of this excellent quote from Amor Towles who famously said in one of his novels:-

“I’ll have a small slice of constructive criticism and a side order of effusive praise please.”

It didn’t seem there was much of either when I went to school but then I do occasionally, although not too often, look at the past through muddied spectacles. I certainly would never have recognised ‘effusive praise’ if I had found it floating in my soup.

Anyhow this blog is lurching from tenuous link to nonsensical brink. It is becoming a serendipitous dipping into amounts of trivia with no apparent point. And nobody, least of all me, would be surprised if you, Dear Reader, were to give up on it and search for something interesting to read. How to plunge a toilet or the art of varnishing a deck, spring to mind. But as I ramble ever onwards, a saunter through pointlessness, I think that I do have a point. And, magic of magic, here it be.

Recently my wife, Irene, attended a meeting of our local Community Association which often seems to me a voluminous, stochastic roam around local vested interests such as bike lanes and sidewalks. But basically these meetings are about what works and what doesn’t, they are about improving safety and adding convenience, monitory democracy in action. As an outsider looking in they are invariably polite and unheated so any issues tend to be couched in moderate language. So I loved it when it was reported to me that one of the committee was described as being, “unencumbered by history”. I grinned at that. But really an absence of a knowledge of history is a serious issue. Because if we don’t know what worked or failed in the past we may be doomed to repeat it as the saying goes. We end up reinforcing failure, sweetening our strawberries with mustard, repeating a doomed policy again without knowing that our predecessors had been there and done that. “I told you so!” should really be the atavistic cry that springs us towards reading about the past. It is true that our ancestors often made a bit of a pig’s ear of things. Really we should learn from bits of pigs’ ears, should we not? I remember reading an obituary of a military officer who had been present on the last occasion that scaling ladders were used in battle. They were so ordered on the basis that ‘if one could not surprise the enemy then one could at least surprise one’s own troops”. Maybe a study of the success of scaling ladders in war would have helped to save lives. Such stories make one glad to have remained a civilian! Being aware that pandemics were part of our history might have caused governments not to cut funding to agencies whose job it is and was to predict and protect against such events. “Oh look a pandemic, how did that happen?” isn’t exactly a statement from government convincing the great unwashed to wash, is it friends? Such preparations could have saved lives.  But as my brother, George would say ‘economists have wonderful hindsight’, which suggests that they look back puffing their plumage when a recession hits, ever ready to shout smug self-righteousness, but never ready to present a solution for prevention next time around. Talking of quotations, I saw this sign by a picture of an African river the other day.

“Crocodiles don’t swim here.”

 To which the answer is “Yes, they do!” when they so obviously do and, yet again, a bit of appropriate punctuation is indeed quite important! A bit of care, a wee comma putting its head above the parapet and demanding a bit of notice, never, really, harmed, a, script, did it? And yes I know a colon and an exclamation mark are having an union meeting as I write claiming that that is their job not that of the puny little comma. Ho Hum, they are right, Dear Friends, but I feel that the colon and the exclamation mark are ‘puffed up wi’ windy pride’; their self-confidence speaks for itself but the little pause that is the comma deserves a bit of a shout out occasionally, don’t you know? And my point here, rather pathetically made I will admit, is that sometimes the quiet, unobtrusive introvert at the back of the classroom has the answer. We too often listen and adhere to the bombastic and the loud, the self- confident and the forthright, when we should recognise and bring forward the background dweller who has the answer. Such people are naturally stepped back so they can help us to naturally step back so that we consider before we ‘bull in a china shop’ the lives of ourselves and others.  

As somebody who was coerced into learning Latin and Greek at school and therefore the myths and history of the ancients as a sort of side salad then I am, late in life, finally coming to appreciate the smattering of understanding and knowledge I took from the experience. I am now frequently stumbling across ancient writings which show that wisdom and understanding of human nature were probably better and more concisely expressed 2,000 years ago than they are now. Unlike Irene’s committee I seem to be ‘encumbered by history’. I am very happy that that it is the case even though my understanding of history is not as analytical and critical as it should be. Sadly my understanding of the present is not at all good either.

So now, Dear Reader, you too have become a victim of tangents, a saunterer, a rambler, a person with no goal, no immediate destiny other than to reach the terminus of this inane drivel and return to a life of relative clarity. Fear not friends, if you feel you have wasted your time, let me assure you that some of my happiest times have been wasted ones. But then that might be just me! But I must end with the correct quotation.

“Knowledge is power.” Francis Bacon.

Thanks for reading.