Thanks for What?

Since today is 4th July, I have a question of Americans.

Independence Day I understand, but what is Thanksgiving Day all about? For what are you giving thanks, exactly? And are you giving thanks to anybody in particular, or just being generally thankful?

It’s an honest question. I’m honestly curious.

Nearly There.

Hey, I now have twenty four US state flags in my flaggy thing. One more to go to the half way stage. Who will it be? New Mexico? Rhode Island? Louisiana? Mississippi? Yeah, come on Mississippi, just ’cos I know how to spell it. Moon River, Huckleberry Finn... And is there a sadder line in any song ever written than ‘I’m tired of living and scared of dying?’

Number twenty four was Georgia. Hello and welcome, Georgia. Wasn’t Oliver Hardy a Georgian?

I think I’d better go to bed before I write something silly.

I have nothing to say.

An Inconvenient Phobia.

I have a theory. (Gosh, Jeffrey’s got a theory!)

It was Emily Bronte who put me onto it. When I was researching the family, I discovered something about her that has led to a difference of opinion among commentators and biographers. She went to school three times during her teen years, twice as a pupil and once as a teacher, and each time she became so depressed that she had to be sent home again. On one occasion, her older sister Charlotte seriously feared for her health.

It has become usual to see Emily’s objection to school simply as a case of homesickness. In my opinion, however, one biographer got it right when she said it was nothing of the sort, for Emily demonstrated several times that she could go away from home without becoming homesick. She said that Emily simply couldn’t stand to be controlled. Something in her nature made it impossible for her to function in an environment where she had to comply with somebody else’s rules, requirements, methods and timetables. It drove her into a pit of despair verging on insanity. Neither should we consider the possibility that she was lazy. All accounts indicate that she was virtually a workaholic when it came to doing the things she wanted to do. But while Charlotte and Ann held several positions as teachers and governesses, Emily stayed at home as housekeeper for the rest of her short life.

I see the same thing in my daughter. After she left school at sixteen, she tried several jobs but couldn’t keep hold of any of them. She became depressed and rebellious. And then she founded and ran an inner city charity because she believed in doing something constructive for the disadvantaged people of poor communities. She did it for thirteen years, whilst at the same time having children and bringing them up diligently. She refused to buy processed food; all meals were properly cooked using fresh ingredients. This meant that the time available to spend on the charity was limited, and she would often work well into the early hours of the morning dealing with funding applications and the like, only to be up again at six for the kids. She worked unbelievably hard for those thirteen years. She was anything but lazy, and yet many saw her as just that because she wasn’t doing a ‘proper job.’

And I’ve seen the same thing in myself. I was successful at school, and yet I absolutely hated going. I used to get very depressed every time a new term was looming. I’ve done a string of jobs and was moderately good at several of them, but I hated them nonetheless. I swear that if I hadn’t managed to become self employed when I was thirty five I would have gone mad. It was becoming that serious. And yet when I started to do what I wanted to do, I worked well. I would sometimes work twelve hour days as a photographer. I went actively looking for work, and was very happy when I got it. I have no problem with working, but I have a deep and abiding loathing of working for an employer.

So, since we’re not looking at laziness here, should we be considering the possibility that there is an inconvenient but definable condition lurking in the minds of some people; and, if so, should we be honest enough to face the fact and recognise it? Could there really be such a thing as employment phobia? Or perhaps we should call it ‘control phobia.’

I do realise that this would be a hard pill for governments and the public to swallow, since they do so like to dismiss as ‘work shy welfare scroungers’ all those who find working for an employer difficult.

And some of them are, of course. But maybe not all.

Edited to add 26/6/25 

I've recently discovered a member of the autism family called PDA - Pathological Demand Avoidance. I wonder whether this might explain everything.

p.s.

Oh, sorry, just to finish up...

Brazil got knocked out of the World Cup today. What small interest I had in the competition has now dissipated.

But I’m impressed that Mark Webber thinks landing upside down in a car travelling at 190 mph is no big deal. These Aussies...

‘Brace yerself, Sheila.’ (Old Aussie joke, and see the last post.)

Better get to bed before Della yells at me. There’s no better yeller than Della.

Phew!

Going to Bed with Sheila Chandra (ringing in my ears.)

Aren't you glad this is it for today?

It’s nearly bed time for this old British reprobate. Sheila Chandra has nearly finished her set, but two thoughts just occurred to me.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about a concept album made by Godley and Creme in the late seventies. It’s a mixture of narrative and music, and the action takes place when freak weather conditions are destroying the world. The main characters are in the office of a rich, fat lawyer, who is describing how difficult it was to drive through the storms. He utters the immortal words:

‘Thank God for the Rolls, I say. Some of the cheaper cars were going backwards.’

Says a lot, eh? Discuss.

And on a personal note, the dawn must be breaking over Mumbai. Good morning, Miss India. I hope your day is a good one. Your daily visit is much valued.

The Queen of Repartee.

In case anybody hasn’t heard this story (and I expect most Americans will have done,) I wanted to throw it into the ring as one of my favourites.

The noted author and wit, Dorothy Parker, was walking through a New York department store. As she approached one of the doors, a rival was approaching it at the same time. The other woman was younger and offered right of way with the words:

‘After you. Age before beauty.’

Dorothy accepted with the retort:

‘Thank you. Pearls before swine.’

Such repartee. She’s one of a very small number of people on my list of ideal dinner party guests. Wendy put me up to thinking about this.

On a more prosaic (and working-class English) note, somebody once told me that he overheard a conversation between two old men. One asked the other:

‘’Ere, Bert, what’s repartee?’

‘Well,’ said Bert, giving the question earnest consideration, ‘you know when you ’ad a go at that bloke in the street the other day, and ’ee told you to bugger off?’

‘Yeah.’

‘That’s repartee.’

Sea Trout.

I’m back to my days with Mars Ltd. It was the last day of the sales training course, and the chief instructor was treating the trainees to a slap-up dinner in a small but fairly exclusive restaurant in Maidenhead.

Half way through the meal, a young waiter approached the table next to ours. He looked inexperienced and nervous, and he looked foreign – Italian, I judged. He was carrying a large silver platter with a domed lid.

When he arrived at the table he stood to attention, removed the lid, and proudly exclaimed:

‘Sea trout!’

Unfortunately, his accent was a little thick and it didn’t sound like ‘sea trout.’

The chief instructor, a late middle aged Lancastrian with a typical taste for plain speaking and ‘basic’ humour, leant across the table to us and said:

‘Did ee just say shit ’ot?’

The people on the receiving table heard him and began to giggle. The people on the table the other side heard him, too, and they began to giggle. The restaurant was, as I said, a small one and the question was repeated from table to table remarkably quickly. Within a very short time, the whole restaurant was giggling.

The poor young waiter looked bemused. He was clearly at a loss to know why everybody was suddenly laughing, but his face betrayed the suspicion that it had something to do with him.

Why?

‘It is happening again.’

(For all you Peakies out there. Best TV show ever! I’m convinced that David Lynch knew things the rest of us don’t.)

Somebody from the UK is still reading my blog in the early hours of the morning. Why would anybody do that? Life’s a mystery. I think I'll go and sleep on it.

Function Can be Subjective.

I have a small outbuilding behind my house. The gutter has slipped over the years, so a quantity of water settles at one end of it instead of all going properly down the spout. I’ve noticed that a lot of birds, ranging in size from little warblers to much bigger blackbirds and thrushes, flock there to drink and bathe.

As we’ve had hardly any rain in my part of Britain for weeks, I’ve taken to keeping it supplied from the watering can. Not only are the birds happy, but it gives me great pleasure to see them from my kitchen window.

It’s likely that the next person to live here will get the landlord to have it repaired so that it ‘functions’ properly. It functions just fine for me.

The Next One.

Just to point out that it is now 1st July in Britain, and the next story will be going up at the other place very shortly. In order to avoid causing further offence to a certain Italian-American who lives in Berlin, I’ve gone back to something that might be said to have a ‘whisper of the Brontes’ about it. No leaking heads and giggling girls in this one. This one’s a bit dark, wild and melancholic. I’m told that bits of it are creepy, too. Not to me they’re not, but I wrote it.

When you’re sitting comfortably...