Prevarication and Procrastination

When I was a student both at school and Teacher’s Training College, I achieved mastery at prevarication and procrastination. This, Dear Reader, is not something of which I am proud. It is true of my life that I do not get bored. But it is also true that I drift in different directions. I am unable to focus on the point of a project without flying off on a tangent. Those of you who are good enough to read my blogs will realise what a meandering maze they are. I am not at all surprised if you become frustrated and give up on them because the point is far too wordy and distant.

I remember going through security at Manchester Airport and finding myself stuck in a sort of international limbo for 12 hours because the plane was late. It was a Sunday, Friends, so there was a plethora of newspapers to read as well as my book. And when I needed to stretch my legs I could do so. I was never bored. Before I knew it, it was time to board.

My excuse for my poor educational performance is that I love tangents. Well, that’s better than admitting to laziness isn’t it, Friends!! One of the facets of the Davidson mind which should be a frustration but actually is not, is that I remember things that are not important and forget things that are. I remember offering to buy lunch for poor Jennifer and her husband, Jamie, at Sun Peaks ski hill . What could I get her? Anything but clam chowder because she does not like fish. I heard ‘clam chowder’ and bought her ‘clam chowder’!! I am not the first man to fall victim to the last thing heard, methinks.

Does an Aussie cab driver really need to know that the emu and the kangaroo appear on his country’s emblem because neither animal can go backwards, thus, I suppose the origin of their national anthem “Advance Australia Fair”?  Well he didn’t know that but he does know it now and he had to be polite and that must have been hard ‘cos I was very evidently a Brit with all the connotations that that had in Oz back in the day.

I have a friend (a major achievement in itself considering my success at managing often to do the wrong thing) who can read a newspaper article and immediately glean from it not only 5 crucial facts but important things which are not written. His analytical brain has been disciplined over the years to get to the heart of something very quickly. It is no accident that he has a Masters degree and has written his own history book. I am in awe of this ability and slightly envious. I shouldn’t be. I am old enough to understand that people who are a success in life are there because they have worked hard at it. They may have a natural talent but talent is worth nothing without hard work. There are numerous pithy sayings about this subject out there which I am not going to explore here because most of you will have heard them before. But as a teacher I loved this one from that long dead, learning disabled guy, Albert Einstein:-

‘We are all geniuses. Judge a fish by his ability to climb a tree and he will think himself stupid for life.”

I spent thirty years of my life playing rugby on most winter Saturdays. It is true to say that I love rugby clubs, I miss playing but I still love watching it. I suffered a lot of abuse from my team-mates because I was supposed to be a monosyllabic Neanderthal who grunted or pointed my approval or disapproval. Certainly no big glaikit lug  was supposed to do the crossword on the team bus or to love poetry like I do, was supposed to love words and literature like I do. So if I had the confidence to spout a couple of lines of poetry over a pint after the game, a shake of the head and silence was the greeting. Nor was it wise to suddenly spout to the opposition as we went into a lineout or a scrum such Shakespearean sonnets as:-

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day, thou art more lovely and more temperate”.

‘Cos they were mud covered and sodden and not lovely and wouldn’t know ‘temperate’ if they found it in their pint. That would have been deserving of a sending off or at least a penalty against. It would not have been in the spirit of the game at all. Burns would have been worse:-

“Wee sleekit cowerin’ timorous beastie, O what a panic’s in thy breastie.”

They so obviously weren’t, panicked that is and any further such outbursts would have been curtailed by a skelp on the lug. Saturday afternoons in the mud and rain were not times to indulge in my love of poetry. Maybe John Evans or Paul Hollis would have appreciated my lyrical thrusts, but the former is Welsh and therefore full of Eisteddfodian grace, the latter was insane and nobody understood him.

Yet here am I writing about these two facets of character because I was recently reminded of an A.E.Housman poem which I will quote in full at blog’s end. Since retirement I have taken an interest in how people write, trying to learn how to better my own scribbles. I am conscious of the fact that much of what I write is of little interest to most people. Indeed 40 years ago I would have written it but would have been so self-conscious and embarrassed that I would never have placed it in the public, or even private, domain. But now I think that one of the benefits of old age is that I can afford to be free of such constraints. I won’t say that I don’t care but I do say that if I don’t say what I really feel I may not get the opportunity again because of the fickleness of life’s thread.

Irene married me, she says, because she felt ‘I would help her relax’. Poor woman. She really could have done with somebody who was a bit more handy around the house. There are minima I can do but as to painting or wall papering or plastering, she is married to Einstein’s fish trying to climb that tree. I can’t help thinking that Irene would have been more relaxed if she had married a DIY person. But we are still happily together after 40 years. But she married into prevarication and procrastination, poor woman!

Oh yes, I nearly forgot. Here be the A.E. Housman poem, the proof that these two faults of mine are not a modern shortcoming but are for the ages:-

How clear, how lovely bright,

How beautiful to sight

Those beams of morning play,

How heaven laughs out with glee,

Where, like a bird set free,

Up from the eastern sea,

Soars the delightful day.

                   ————

Today I shall be strong

No more shall yield to wrong,

Shall squander life no more,

Days lost, I know not how,

I shall retrieve them now,

Now I shall keep the vow,

I never kept before.

               ————-

Ensanguining the skies,

How heavily it dies,

Into the west away,

Past touch and sight and sound,

Not further to be found,

How hopeless under ground,

Falls the remorseful day.

And if that does not persuade us to make the most of every day, Friends, I know not what may. Thanks for reading.