You live and learn. That’s the idea, anyway. But this idea is undermined by a simple thing called human idiocy. I, for example, am apparently unable to learn a number of fairly simple things.
- My feet dish out so I’m going to accidentally kick that low wobbly table, yes that one, the one with the cup of tea on it or rather the one that used to have a cup of tea on it.
- It will take me more than three seconds to find my wallet, so three seconds before I have to leave the house is a bad time to start looking for it.
- Same goes with keys.
- IKEA is big. You’re not just going to nip in and out.
- Related: you don’t need 46 identical Allen keys, but you do need one of that size you don’t have.
- High heat + time = burnt food.
And so on.
While I recognise all of the above at a cognitive level, and am able to recall them at leisure, it’s in the heat of battle that I need them most, and that’s exactly when they desert me.
Nonetheless, despite my own best efforts, I go on learning, and maybe, just maybe, some of the stuff I learn will sink into the mulch and go some way towards enriching my life in the future. It might even prove useful.
Some of these things are self-evident, or they are things I have always known at some level, but they poked their heads above the parapet at some point this week and commanded my attention for a minute or two. Others are things I didn’t know, and which I’ll almost certainly forget before stumbling on them again at some point and going ‘Oh, yes, that. I think I knew that.’
See if you can guess which is which.
- Age doesn’t necessarily equate to wisdom, but if you find an old wise person, talk to them a lot.
- Victoria Wood and Nora Ephron were both born on May 19th. It’s possible this is a coincidence, but I doubt it. So I’m changing my date of birth to May 19th – maybe it’ll mean I can have a bit of what they had.
- Marvin Gaye could sing the wings off angels even when lounging on a sofa.
- Blackbirds are loud.
- Nightingales are even louder.
- People love a frock.
- Some people will always hate. Others will always love. Nothing we can do about it.
- Related: trite motivational quotes sometimes contain truth.
- Jose Mourinho lacks grace.
- Watching people cycle up ridiculously steep hills is strangely mesmerising.
- Cats doing stupid things will always make me laugh and that’s absolutely fine.
- Be patient with stupid people. You’re one of them.
- That said, those two dog walkers who had their dogs off the lead despite the signs and then ignored you when you showed them the map and told them that this was the footpath, this one here, the one that looks like a footpath and has a sign saying ‘footpath’, and not that scrubby little track, don’t go down there it’s not a footpath, and meanwhile their dogs were running wild all over the place and probably trampling all over a skylark’s nest – they can fuck off good and proper.
- That white van is going to cut you up, yes it is you know it is, so you might as well sit back and let it in rather than get all arsey about it.
- People, on the whole, are overwhelmingly good.
- There are few better things in life than walking into your local bookshop and seeing your own book on display for the first time.
Yes, Why Do Birds Suddenly Disappear? is out there, in the wild, and I’m as chuffed as Thomas the Tank Engine. People are saying some extraordinarily generous things about it, engendering all sorts of warm fuzzy feelings in the Parikian heart. The mere fact of its production is satisfaction enough in its own way, but it would be dishonest to pretend that enormous sales aren’t one of my key goals. So I would absolutely love it if you were to buy it and read it.
And with word of mouth so important in generating sales, if you have already read and enjoyed it, I would love it even more if you were to tell someone.
And yet further, if you were to take two minutes to leave a review here or here, well crikey that would be the delicately chopped chives on the eggs Benedict of my Sunday morning.
I have an annotated copy of Why Do Birds Suddenly Disappear? to give away to one lucky person. It is full of things like this.
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