Everyone has his price. No one is beyond being bought.
How much does it take for long held principles to fade away into mere memory? How firms are your values as temptation slides into view with an alluring leer?
It is not easy for someone as life affirmingly easy going as myself to imagine possessing a personality which rubs up against the minor irritations of life and finds expression in diatribes of venom flecked vituperation against everybody and everything which irks. However, I am prepared to make an effort and, using a considerable amount of imagination, I will try an empathy exercise and think myself into a curmudgeonly personality and make a list of ten of the sort of things which might be the bane of such a person’s life.
1. Use of mobile phones in public.
2. Wearing baseball caps the wrong way round
3. Able bodied parking in disabled spaces
4. That Woman and all other Conservatives
5. Drivers not indicating when turning
6. Chelsea tractors or people carriers
7. MacDonald’s
8. The ‘nobility’ including HRH and parasites
9. Rap
10. Rat dogs (i.e. any dog which is not a yellow Labrador bitch)
A list of amazing ordinariness and restraint you might say. I apologise for my lack of extremism in this empathetic attempt to get in touch with my obnoxious doppelganger.
Say, for a moment, that this list did bear some sort of resemblance to a list I might be persuaded to articulate: what would encourage or force me to go back on long held certainties and lapse into sin?
It is not easy for someone as life affirmingly easy going as myself to imagine possessing a personality which rubs up against the minor irritations of life and finds expression in diatribes of venom flecked vituperation against everybody and everything which irks. However, I am prepared to make an effort and, using a considerable amount of imagination, I will try an empathy exercise and think myself into a curmudgeonly personality and make a list of ten of the sort of things which might be the bane of such a person’s life.
1. Use of mobile phones in public.
2. Wearing baseball caps the wrong way round
3. Able bodied parking in disabled spaces
4. That Woman and all other Conservatives
5. Drivers not indicating when turning
6. Chelsea tractors or people carriers
7. MacDonald’s
8. The ‘nobility’ including HRH and parasites
9. Rap
10. Rat dogs (i.e. any dog which is not a yellow Labrador bitch)
A list of amazing ordinariness and restraint you might say. I apologise for my lack of extremism in this empathetic attempt to get in touch with my obnoxious doppelganger.
Say, for a moment, that this list did bear some sort of resemblance to a list I might be persuaded to articulate: what would encourage or force me to go back on long held certainties and lapse into sin?
This is where semantics comes into its own. As old professor Joad always used to say before giving his opinion on any subject, “It depends what you mean by . . . “ it is a useful reminder of the slippery nature of words and contexts.
Take, for example, mobile phones. I own a mobile phone and I have used the same but, and this is an important qualification, only when it was essential to do so: this is allowed. It is not the reflex action of a socially challenged adolescent who obviously feels unloved and isolated unless a showy piece of engineering is fixed permanently to one side of his skull and he can engage in phatic ‘conversation’ with an equally vacuous individual.
I have worn a baseball cap backwards; but only when swimming in a sultry climate and when my (alas!) unprotected pate has not fully adjusted to the rigors of that rare visitor in Wales, the sun. You try swimming with the cap on the right way: impossible!
So (with a few obvious exceptions) you can work your way down the list and find extenuating circumstances. The most ‘obvious exception’ from the list above is, self evidently, freedom of choice in the type of dog that is acceptable: only the Labrador. Obviously!
But, and it’s a big but, there comes a time when you have to accept that you will be acting outside your normal parameters. Tomorrow will be such a day. Tomorrow I drive a People Carrier.
Now there are reasons: the Catalan contingent arrive, complete with grandson and, if the normal round of shopping is to be achieved then a mere saloon car is clearly going to be inadequate. I only hope that nobody I know sees me; though given my prejudices I’m sure that if anyone does see me they will assume that their eyesight is at fault and I will be safe.
The photography continues to develop. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist that one!) My concentration on flowers also continues with my attention focussed on the humble cyclamen. It has proved to be a very tricky subject. I bought a small pot of cyclamen and put it on the metal table outside in front of the French doors. The small flowers have now gone past their best, and their size and number have been added difficulties in producing a decent image. I’ve eventually come down to two.
What do you think?
Take, for example, mobile phones. I own a mobile phone and I have used the same but, and this is an important qualification, only when it was essential to do so: this is allowed. It is not the reflex action of a socially challenged adolescent who obviously feels unloved and isolated unless a showy piece of engineering is fixed permanently to one side of his skull and he can engage in phatic ‘conversation’ with an equally vacuous individual.
I have worn a baseball cap backwards; but only when swimming in a sultry climate and when my (alas!) unprotected pate has not fully adjusted to the rigors of that rare visitor in Wales, the sun. You try swimming with the cap on the right way: impossible!
So (with a few obvious exceptions) you can work your way down the list and find extenuating circumstances. The most ‘obvious exception’ from the list above is, self evidently, freedom of choice in the type of dog that is acceptable: only the Labrador. Obviously!
But, and it’s a big but, there comes a time when you have to accept that you will be acting outside your normal parameters. Tomorrow will be such a day. Tomorrow I drive a People Carrier.
Now there are reasons: the Catalan contingent arrive, complete with grandson and, if the normal round of shopping is to be achieved then a mere saloon car is clearly going to be inadequate. I only hope that nobody I know sees me; though given my prejudices I’m sure that if anyone does see me they will assume that their eyesight is at fault and I will be safe.
The photography continues to develop. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist that one!) My concentration on flowers also continues with my attention focussed on the humble cyclamen. It has proved to be a very tricky subject. I bought a small pot of cyclamen and put it on the metal table outside in front of the French doors. The small flowers have now gone past their best, and their size and number have been added difficulties in producing a decent image. I’ve eventually come down to two.
What do you think?
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