THE THING IS©

We have some pretty deep conversations playing golf, you know. It is not like you tennis players – all grunts and joyful shouts of ‘OUT!’ or croquet malleteers who seem to spend most of the time either sitting down morosely watching other players beat them up and then trying hard to be well-mannered with a cry of ’Daphne – great hoop’, whatever that may mean. Or squash players shouting ‘LET’ like a triumphant estate agent.

No – golfers don’t just shout Fore! or announce ‘I’m giving this up NOW’ which often follows on from ’I don’t believe it’ as per Victor Meldrew, we actually chat away quite a lot.

And so the subject came up on the 15th the other day of THINGS. At that stage of the game we had all given up on a card breaking score, had ceased to look for wayward balls and were looking forward to a warm shower and a wee dram or a pint of London Pride. So, you can see we were in dreamland already. There were 3 of us – the Lawyer, Mediaman and the Jack of All trades

Thus, THINGS seemed an entirely logical thing to chat about.

Jack asked: ‘What is your favourite thing?’

The Lawyer said that you needed to define what is a THING

Mediaman said it was what the client was made to think it was.

After a short silence when the Lawyer’s putt stopped 1 inch short of the hole, Mediaman said that he would put his wife first. But then he is a wise Mediaman who gets well fed and knows how to keep his bread buttered.

The Lawyer followed up by saying that his favourite Thing is – and then he paused – well, they always pause as that takes another few seconds and adds to their six-minute charging rate – and announced that his Things is his TV.

Mediaman was delighted at this as he could talk about TV advertising and how the average attention span had reduced to 20 seconds due to TV commercials. That’s his Thing you see.

Jack – who was trying to concentrate on his putt – said something indecipherable about inconsequential chat while he was on the verge of his first single putt of the round – and promptly missed – again.

If you look up THING in THE Dictionary it says: ‘Any possible object of thought including persons, material objects, events, qualities, circumstances, utterances and acts’.

So, by that definition a Thing is EVERYTHING.

If you ever say to your ever-loving ‘Hello, old thing’ you may well be correct. But probably not very popular.

If you announce ‘The Thing is …’ – you are bound to be correct as the THING is a THING.

The Right Thing is also the Wrong Thing as it is still a THING and someone, somewhere will disagree with your THING.

Now, just say THING out loud 12 times and see what happens.

SomeTHING

Duncan Christie-Miller | All rights Reserved© July 2020