Seize The Day (Not)

Mr Dear is full of good advice but Rosemary would take issue with some of it.

Regular readers will vouch for the fact that Mr Dear is a mild-mannered man. He is rarely known to shout, or go red in the face, or throw things at the TV when the news is on. When Rudyard Kipling mentioned the benefits of meeting triumph and disaster just the same, he might well have been writing young Mr Dear’s school report.

In fact, there was only one thing that even raised him to the level of ‘ever so slightly cross’ and that was when he caught the children lazing about.

‘Go out and do something,’ he would say. ‘It doesn’t matter what it is. The more things you do, the more chance there is that interesting things will happen to you.’

This became a sort of family motto. If, after a hard day at the hardware store, Mr Dear happened to be snoozing in an armchair, he would suddenly find himself surrounded by children chanting, ‘The more things you do, the more chance there is that interesting things will happen to you.’

What Mr Dear neglected to mention was this: yes, interesting things might well happen, but there is also the risk that occasionally you will be made to look a complete and utter chump.

As a prime example of this, might I first present the case of Mrs Beasley and The Fake Boyfriend. This, to refresh your memory, is the story so far: 

1 Mrs Beasley’s ex-husband wanted to pop by and pick up some of his belongings at the marital home, where Mrs B now presides. (For new readers, Mrs B is the manager of the charity shop where I volunteer.)