You didn’t expect me to pop up here today. Ha, you can’t get rid of me that easily. Much as I enjoyed having a column on a Monday, I am over the moon that the wise editor of this reinvigorated publication has switched it to a Wednesday. It means I get my weekends back. Joy.
I am now full of get up and go and brimming with positive thinking to try and get you to buy this newspaper on a Wednesday as well as every other day too. It’s just so handy in its new size. Be honest. These broadsheets really are a waste of time. They’re just too big. You can’t keep an eye on the TV news while reading them because they are just too wide and, far more importantly, when I was reading the broad P&J sheets, I couldn’t also keep an eye on the window to spy on the delightful Joan Stewart who lives up at the top of our road – except on a Monday and a Saturday when we had the handy-sized editions.
Now I can keep tabs on Joan every day of the week – and also see if her husband D A is prowling around without me having to battle with a huge wall of paper that took most of a rainforest to produce. See? Compact newspapers will help you live you enjoy life. Mrs X and I like the new size so much that we were fighting over who is going to read it first. Ony one answer. We have now ordered two copies each day. His and hers.
I’m a worrier. When I know I have a deadline, I can’t relax. When I did venture out on a Saturday eventide, it would be as well if I hadn’t gone past the front door. My head would be full of ideas as I wonderd what to write. Sometimes I would try and think of a theme with the help of some of my dearest friends.
Sitting in an alehouse with George Gawk, who has often been a source of inspiration – and who still speaks to me despite that, he suggested that I should write about positive thinking. I asked him if he had any examples that I could use.
He recounted a tale about how the fabled Angelo Dundee, the boxing manager, second, cut man and sponger offer, used to keep his all his fighters like Cassius Clay really positive by whispering to them as he sponged the streaks of blood out of their eyes. Yes, George. What did he say to them? Tell me. Tell me.
“Don’t worry, champ. I think it must be your round.” Ach, I shouldn’t have asked him. That’s pretty much George’s answer to any question you ask him.
Now, with no weekend deadline to fret over, I can go out carousing at the weekend with a clear conscience. I might still sit there with George nursing a flat iron brew, as I have done for years for the P&J cause.
Then again, I might not.
This column’s change of day means big changes for Mrs X too. Last Sunday, she did not have the pleasure of seeing me get up frightfully early to punch computer keys while she turned over and went back to snooze for a few hours. Nah, that’s not going to happen any more. I’ll lay back and relax too. Bliss.
“I ain’t going nowhere, baby. I’m staying right here with you while we read our compact-sized P&Js together. Now stop hogging that duvet. Oh, pardon me. I think I had too much of that late Saturday night curry. It’s been so long since I had one that it’s causing havoc down there.”
Now I just have to jump out of bed early and worry on a Tuesday. Oh well.
Positive thinking is a good theme. Have there been any other examples? Hmm, let me think. There was the lady here on Lewis who we heard about last week. She claimed she had nowhere to stable her pony. So she moved it into her own living room. I suppose it was positive thinking to hope that the neighbours wouldn’t complain. Sometimes positive thinking isn’t enough.
It has been claimed to help on the sports field too. Take our own local Point Football Club for example. They weren’t doing well in a match a while back, I am told. They were 3-0 down at half-time. The very positive manager was giving them a pep talk with their oranges.
It was all about how the lads had to be better at anticipating where all the other players were going to be in three seconds time, he said. They had to stop thinking of themselves as as individuals and begin working as a team.
To get them thinking about that, the coach came out with that famous inspirational line: “There is no I in team.”
Sadly, the words of encouragement did not get through to one doleful dribbler who was heard to say: “Aye, and there’s no F in Point.”
My parrot is not in favour of tabloid newspapers as there is a tendency for them to shorten stories to fit on the page. She considers that this leads to the “dumbing down” of such newspapers, thus making them unsuitable for lining the bottom of her cage. She does not subscribe to the commonly held opinion that their being tabloid makes them eminently suitable for that purpose.