Words echo through the years. I hear and remember them as if it were today. The written word can be as memorable. Here are some that stayed with me, the ones that come first to mind, which probably say as much about me as their speakers or writers. Do any resonate with you, or do you remember others?
You know very well John that men are afraid of living alone.
(JB, English Literature Teacher on the evening class I took when retaking Advanced Level exams in my mid-twenties. After the course ended, John (another student) and I went with him for a drink, and he was complaining that creative output declines or ends after marriage, as had happened to him. John asked him why he had got married then.)
It takes you ten years before you realise how crap you are.
(Tim Keech, Hull guitar teacher. It applies to other skills as well, from computer programming to blogging. My own variation is: No matter how good you think you are, there is always someone better. I used to say this to the computing students. Another variation is: The more you know, the more you realise you don’t know. Or as the friend I call Gilbert in this blog put it: You know fuck all Tasker. He was very astute.)
The motorcycle you are maintaining is yourself.
(Slightly misquoted from Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Again, it applies to almost anything in which you are so deeply immersed it becomes therapeutic and cuts out all other concerns. This was something else I used to tell computing students.)
If those countless millions began to see the possibilities he saw and were then frustrated, there might be hell to pay. And they have been frustrated.
(Ted Simon in Jupiter’s Travels, an account of his journey round the world 1973-1977 on a motorbike, observing the different living standards between rich and poor countries. He was right.)
You always fall on your feet, don’t you.
(My mother after I scraped six Ordinary Level exam passes at school, allowing me to progress post-16 into the Sixth Form. She knew how little work I had done.)
I’ve got more common sense in my little finger than you have in your whole body.
(My mother during her final illness, as my impractical dad struggled to erect bean poles, a job she had always done but no longer could. He usually responded with Aren’t I lucky to have married such a practical wife! But I could have strangled him when he visited one day to find me with the floorboards up, channels cut in the walls, wiring neatly laid out, as I was installing some new spur sockets in the bedroom. Aren’t you lucky to have married such a practical wife! he said.)
Always make sure your driving wheels are on firm ground.
(My dad on driving on muddy ground, but it seems to have wider meaning. Another useful tip was: In ice and snow, drive in the highest gear possible so as not to spin the wheels.)
This is the life.
(The friend I call Neville in this blog, sometimes laying on the ground in hot sum out in the countryside with his shirt off, but more often up a mountain sipping a cup of coffee from a thermos flask, hiding from driving rain and sleet behind an inadequate rock, exhausted. He is blessed with the gift of always remaining cheerful.)
It’s a bugger, i’n’t it.
(The family friend I call Uncle Jimmy in this blog, on serious illness. At the end, my Aunt said we had better get him into hospital. “All right,” he said, “but we’ll have a cig first. We’ll have one o’ yours.”
Age is like cricket. Some make a century while others are out for a duck. A score in the seventies is a useful innings.
(Me in a draft too bleak to post.)
There were many others, but I will stop with those.
My London-born mother, who had lived a life that was anything but easy, always said to me when I experienced life’s difficulties: "Keep your pecker up." This from a woman went to work at 14 to support her family; whose father died suddenly at 62 in 1939 during the Phony War; who lost her Royal Navy brother to a U-boat torpedo the following year; had her family’s East End home damaged by a bomb; drove a St John’s ambulance during the Blitz and beyond (one of three jobs she held simultaneously throughout WWII); who met my US father and married just weeks before VE day, and left her homeland on the Queen Mary the following year to start a new life at the age of 37. Knowing all this, I was never in doubt that when she used that phrase in her humorous voice, there was actually a wealth of untold pain and experience behind it, but she never allowed self-pity or sorrow to overwhelm her or me. Mum knew only too well what it meant to keep your pecker up and face life head on and she did it with grace and humour.
ReplyDeleteMy mother was fond of accusing me of "going off the rails". Looking back on it now, and comparing it to life today, I had nowhere near "gone off the rails" than Adam and it would frequently be for doing no more than glancing at a boy she didn't approve of. I have just read Mary's comment and would add that my mother also told us to "keep your pecker up" and we were not allowed to do otherwise, through thick and thin.
ReplyDeleteTwo of those ... This is the Life ... and ... It's a bugger isn't it ... were favourites of our dear departed best friend who died aged 62. The latter saying was uttered when he 'phoned to tell us the news about his imminent demise from pancreatic cancer. Prior to that he often uttered "This Is The Life" when enjoying a drink and a meal with us somewhere.
ReplyDeleteWe often think about him still.
My mother said to me once, "I never worry about you. You always land on your feet." It bothered me a great deal although I never let on. I was going through an especially hard time then, and could have used a helping hand. Another one that caught my attention was the quote from Jupiter's Travels. When you've got the stock market crashing and the cause of the uncertainty standing before you with his shiny new red Tesla and talking about what a shame it is that his billionaire hatchet man is suffering financial loss, it just strikes me that there are millions of people watching that who are wondering how they are going to make bills this month. At some point, we will see that frustration really take root and grow.
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