The whelk of human kindness

Be kind to your­self, at least for a few hours.

Just before I ven­ture out­side — in a futile attempt to soak up a few rays of today’s rather watery sun­shine, but more likely to indulge in some fool­ish but abso­lutely neces­sary retail ther­apy for the sake of men­tal equi­lib­rium — I’d just like to share the fol­low­ing with you.

Yes­ter­day after­noon, while at work, I got up from my desk and stubbed my toe. Walk­ing along the cor­ridor, I then trapped the middle fin­ger of my left hand in a door. Return­ing to my desk, I tripped and nearly fell over. No, I wasn’t drunk, but some­thing was def­in­itely amiss.

At that point, I exper­i­enced a brief, dazzling moment of enlight­en­ment. I returned to my desk and, without think­ing about it fur­ther in case I star­ted con­sid­er­ing the rami­fic­a­tions and ended up talk­ing myself out of it, announced to my boss that I would be tak­ing tomor­row off as leave. I decided not to add that this was for no reason other than, if I didn’t, I would prob­ably find myself sud­denly pla­cing my hands on the sides of my head and scream­ing for at least a minute and a half. No, I didn’t think that would be fair. So I just told him I wouldn’t be in tomor­row, and added no fur­ther explanation.

I am begin­ning to won­der, just occa­sion­ally, why we put ourselves through this employ­ment rig­mar­ole. Surely if we had a mass vote, and every­body agreed to give up the daily grind, we could find another way — an invent­ive, altern­at­ive 21st cen­tury way — to con­tinue busi­ness and pro­duc­tion? Maybe we should invest­ig­ate com­munal thought pro­cesses as a means of get­ting things done. If every­body sat cross-legged on the floor and con­cen­trated between the hours of 2pm and 3pm every after­noon, would we be able to achieve everything we cur­rently do in an eight-hour work­ing day merely through the power of sixty minutes of pos­it­ive thought? Isn’t it at least worth a try? Give it a go in your office this after­noon — tell them I told you to do it. I’m sure they’ll understand.

Work is a funny place to be at the moment. Funny pecu­liar, not funny ha ha. Obvi­ously. That’s why ideas such as becom­ing a coun­try vicar, a pot­ter or, indeed, a her­mit (the pay’s ter­rible, but the hours are good) fleet­ingly cross my mind dur­ing moments of bore­dom and/or tension.

But enough of such whim­sical thoughts. I’m off to com­mune with nature — or, at least, the lim­ited amount of nature provided by a west Lon­don park. I’ll try not to talk to the trees, I prom­ise. [entry title by noodle vague]