Busy doing nothing

A good idea is promiscuous: it needs to be had and doesn’t care by whom.

A good friend reminded me of one of his mother’s favourite sayings and I promised to put it on my “plagiarize as soon as possible” pile. “Think before you decide to say something – and then don’t!” is as close as I can recall it. This is not really the spirit of blogging at all, but does explain why I haven’t written anything for a couple of weeks. When I thought about what I was going to write, I realized that I didn’t have anything particularly useful, interesting or even mildly amusing to say. Because I’d fallen victim to a nasty end of summer cold, one of the two mini-epidemics doing the rounds; the other is conjunctivitis.

Once upon a time, I would have purchased a box of panadol, some Strepsils and a packet of tissues, then gone out into the world, performing all tasks with less than usual enthusiasm and effect, probably infecting a good percentage of those with whom I came into contact as well. Not any more. The purchases are the same, but I retire with some books, countless cups of tea and some cough syrup to my favourite chair, where, mainly thanks to the codeine in the cough syrup, my best thing becomes falling asleep.

The result is a quicker recovery for me, less infection of others and no poorly performed tasks, err, yes, I know, no tasks performed at all actually. But I feel better for treating myself thus.

So what was the good idea that inspired this? Well sometimes the best course of action is just to do nothing.