“MY PPE FOR THE PCC”
‘I did warn you,’ said Humpty. He did indeed. ‘Faithful are the wounds of a friend,’ as it says in Proverbs. Humpty had said that any blog like mine was likely to make a splash and then sink without trace. And that is about the size of it. A handful of followers, to whom I am immensely grateful, take an interest. Some of them I have known over the years. Some are companions in the locality where I have spent half my life. Others I have come across for the first time during the emergency. The fact remains that we are few, even though a happy few.
So Humpty was right. Just as Gray was right when he wrote in his elegy about the many who had their inconspicuous day and disappeared. The desert remained. That is the destiny of the vast majority of us. We are typified by St Simon and St Jude, about whom we know next to nothing. I find it delightful and instructive to have been born on the day when they appear in the calendar. I hope I am enduringly content to be one of the great unshorn. Unkempt we are; unkempt we answer the door-bell; unkempt we face the future. The past is another country. The present is menacing. We fly forgotten as a dream flies at the opening day. That is our lot.
And yet perhaps there is something more to be said. It was Yeats who suggested we have to choose between perfection of the life and perfection of the work. We can all catch something of this when we survey our life’s activities and priorities. And that is why in the midst of my petty concerns I hope that this blog may gain some kind of wider hearing rather than slither unnoticed into Davy Jones’s locker.
Taking this option seriously, we have to be on our guard. There are risks, as in every choice in life. ‘Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower safety,’ is a maxim that we find to be true in many contexts. Perhaps there were regiments of people who looked at Europe that way in 1348, not to mention years when the plague returned. We are not the first generation to face a threat of this kind. Neither are we the first generation to find the Christian Gospel more enduring than Gray’s flower blushing in the desert and then gone and forgotten.
So let me say a word of appreciation for the fact that you have chosen to glance at what Humpty and I have to offer. And let me also invite you to give this blog a push to win new friends. Humpty and I are at your service. Perhaps you could start today by commending the blog to just one new person. Tell us what you’ve done. Make a difference. You may inspire others. And thank you.
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