Me and the dog felt like a walk, so off we toddled. We went through the back gate, around a field, and back the way we?d come. When I got home I put the kettle on and as I did so it occurred to me that I?d twice used the gate that I?d so laboriously repaired only a couple of days before, with ne?er a thought. So it is with so many jobs. A job needing doing reminds you of itself all the time; a done job maintains a low profile; so low that you forget about it altogether. Washed pots, darned socks, emulsioned walls, completed paperwork, laid bricks, vacuumed carpets, no-one celebrates the toiler who produced them, including himself. When I was working I often did jobs that were not visible unless you looked hard or had special access, or both, and anyway who looks at cables and suchlike? I used to think, ?I made a good job of that, but no-one including me will know I?ve even done it by this time tomorrow (and ever after) because I?ll have forgotten all about it and no-one else will ever think to look at it.? Which is a bit sad really: all those hours of work going unrecorded and unremembered. Maybe in a hundred years? time when the building is demolished someone will get a glimpse of a bit of cable or something and say, ?I wonder what became of the cove who installed that?? Or, more likely, no they won?t. Only the great artists can immortalise themselves in their work; it isn?t a possibility for the common man.
Bill