Sunday, 21 December 2014

Attack the Day

Yesterday (Saturday) I felt under the weather and it showed I maybe was not at my brightest around the house. While Marion spent the afternoon preparing for Christmas, I essentially was mopping around, doing some desultory clearing up, and listening to the capitulation by Boro at Ipswich. I was put in my place this morning while listening to Desert Island Discs. For those foreign readers this is an interview programme on BBC Radio. It is based upon the premise that the interviewee is marooned on a desert island and has to pick eight records as well as a luxury and book for company. It enables the interviewer, the very effective Kirsty Young to ask probing and personal questions, but in a conversational rather than confrontational manner. For UK readers I urge you to catch-up with this on I Player.

Today’s interviewee was Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury. He is a man that I have admired from afar and so was extremely interested to hear his views. Well I learnt a very interesting lesson from him, when he discussed the impact of personal tragedy on his life, and how tragedy affected other people. He coined the phrase “Attack the Day”, simply this means to approach each day in a very positive manner. Particularly those potentially sad anniversaries of a death use the day to celebrate that person’s life, tell those amusing anecdotes, and recount the good times. I felt this also had a personal relevance in the light of Saturday for me.

On Saturday I had let the day take me over, and so the depression that I felt just multiplied and fed on itself. Using the Archbishop’s dictate I should have taken hold of the day by the scruff of the neck, got up to my elbows in pastry, cheese, and bacon and “attempted” to make some canapés giving Marion full rein to her criticisms. It is always better to try rather than sit on the side-lines. So over the next year I shall try to “attack the day”, I will not always be successful but it should be interesting, not the least to those of you who will have to eat the canapés.


I am writing this listening to Leonard Cohen and even he is making me happy. Marion quoted the line – “You tell me that you like handsome men, but for me you make an exception”. Says it all really.

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for the recommendation - I found the program on line and will have a listen. You are not the only one needing reminders to "attack the day"... especially after weeks oppressive grey skies.... and it is only December! Visiting Hillary in her equatorial locale is looking more and more like a very good idea:).

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