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An odd sense of humour and swimming all the way to Calais

An indicator perhaps of my odd sense of humour, this footpath sign always makes me smile -




Choices - path to left or right. Or straight to heaven.

... Yes - I know the 'up' is meant to indicate straight ahead, but that's not what I see, or think, when I walk by. Which I do frequently. Is 'walking on by' another way for a procrastinator to plough ahead - safer walking the worn path of blind-faith-in-sameness: same avoidance of decisions, same putting everything off, same not straying to embark on a new path in case that new path disappoints or throws up new challenges which would then have to be avoided, buried, and lost in the mountainous to-do-pile. Hmmm - this procrastinator is going to change. The list of jobs is too long to ignore, the consequences too hard to bear, and the fear of failure diminished a little, by some hopefully not too transient positive thinking.

I spent this morning explaining positive thinking to Littlest who styles herself "the worst swimmer in the school." And ...


Huh! This procrastinator has not veered off the path of putting-EVERYTHING-off-until-I-don't-know ... tomorrow? Tomorrow seems so soon! The above was started three - yes! THREE! - days ago. And not finished. Looked at. Read. Mulled over. Several times. But not finished. No effort expended whatsoever in straying off the procrastinating path into a fresh territory called the land of getting-things-done.

Huh! Indeed.

Where was I before I interrupted myself?

Littlest. And swimming ...

She has worried all week about her swim-a-thon event this afternoon. Her league at school were due to swim to raise money for charity and some of her friends had gathered sponsorship for "lots of lengths". For her, it would be an achievement to swim two. The shame! She wondered if she might be able to have the day off school - perhaps suffering from swimming-pool-itis. She's not called Littlest for nothing. And when little, it is hard to swim as fast or as strong as your peers.

Swimming-pool-itis being a 'disease' absent from ICD-10, the current international classification of disease, we didn't feel able to cite it as a valid excuse for missing school, so we duly sponsored her - an amount of money to be paid, regardless of number of lengths, if she swam at all.

She seemed happy with this. Until she read the blurb on the sponsorship sheet. Her league intended to swim 'from Dover to Calais, about 22 miles.' And she went to bed muttering "I can't do that" and dreaming of being tossed into the English Channel and being told to 'swim for France.'


She came home this evening, a very happy and unusually assertive bunny ... or fish, having just swum twenty-two lengths of the school pool!!
Aren't we relieved that we didn't sponsor her per length!!!




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