Friday 11 November 2022

What if?


These days I make plans. Not big plans, very small ones in fact.

For instance, I will be sitting at the table before breakfast and will plan out my moves to bring cutlery, plates and the food to it before leaving the chair. After that is done I will decide in which order I will put the detritus in the bin and the plate in the sink - also before leaving the seat. I am not OCD (I think), but anyone trained in Time and Motion studies (remember that? I almost called it 'Health and Efficiency') would wonder why I bother.

I also worry a lot about small things. For instance, yesterday I planned to meet a friend and we were going to sit in the garden of a pub and smoke cigars brought from his humidor. He is a cigar enthusiast.

This idea came about when I casually mentioned that I intended to smoke a cigar in our house on Christmas day, purely to bring back childhood memories of the aroma of stale cigar smoke left hanging on the curtains to be found the following day by little me.

He jumped on this idea and began making arrangements to smoke one of his. Truly, I would have preferred to hire a surrogate uncle on the night and smell his cigar on Boxing Day, but my friend seemed to take over and a date was pencilled-in for our smoke, well in advance of Christmas.

As the day came closer I began to worry. What if I don't want to smoke a cigar? What if we forget to bring something to light them with? Does the pub sell lighters and, if so, how much do they cost?

Last night I arrived at the pub early and went through the empty garden to get a drink. I was just about to go back out when I heard him call me from a dark corner. It was a cold and windy night and the garden had no lighting, so he had decided to forget the idea of cigars and stay inside.

I need not have worried after all.

22 comments:

  1. That, Tom - "I need not have worried after all" - could be the inscription on my tombstone (haha - November darkness again, though we bathe here in Bavaria in so much sunshine at the moment).
    By now I come to terms with "worrying" - I think it is a price one pays for a vivid imagination, for phantasy and for being able to think of more than one outcome of a plan.
    I plan a lot - more than ever - and I feel good with that too (others sometime complain if I want to fix a date - but they are using up my time left when they do not want to be specific, and nowadays I have learned to insist (though I am flexible when something gets in-between).

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    1. It was a combination of age, stress and external factors which started me worrying about small things. I don't think it will last forever, even though there seems to be a lot to worry about these days.

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  2. I plan in my head jouneys in the house to keep them ergonomically efficient as I move between rooms. I do it all the time before I rise from the chair. As for worrying, I don't.

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    1. You will even less if you stick to the Taosim.

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  3. I'm a list maker and a planner, unfortunately I'm also a worrier. I've heard it called "long distance worrying" which is worrying about stuff that is still far away in time which may or may not happen. My husband says he couldn't live in my head. -Jenn

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    1. My worrying is strictly short-term. I don't make big plans.

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  4. My son is the occasional cigar smoker, as well and he has a group of fellow enthusiasts who plan nights out around a good cigar.

    Beats me. He was the one who bitched the most when I used to smoke cigarettes. (22 years without one)

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    1. Well, some people say that one cigar is the equivalent to about 20 cigarettes, so I don't know who is in the wrong.

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  5. You seem to live a well ordered life. Order has been re-established and your Christmas cigar (instead of November) is back on schedule.

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  6. I can worry even when there is nothing to worry about. Actually, once I know what I'm facing, I stop worrying. It's the unknown that gets to me.

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    1. I don't worry about the unknown, it's the obvious possible outcomes which trouble me.

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  7. Were you always such a planner? Not when a tot sniffing the curtains, but when did it come over you to time and motion every act?

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    1. No, I have never been a planner. When I say I make little plans, I am not being that serious. I enjoy wasting time and have always told myself that it cannot be truly wasted in any case.

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  8. Well, sniffing curtains is preferable to sniffing bicycle seats Tom! I, too, have started planning my moves around the house, particularly to go upstairs. A stroke some years ago has left me with neuropathy in my left lef/foot and unnecessary walking around is to be avoided. Fortunately that does not prevent me from country rides on an electrcally assisted bike.

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    1. Yes, I think arthritis has made me plan physical moves more than I used to. It hurts me to walk, so I try to get a parking place as close to the house as possible, for instance.

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  9. I just remember the smell of tobacco imbedded in the leather seats from cigars in the Rover my grandfather had. The row of pipes he occasionally used, the German Meerschaums always elegant. There was a time of course when tobacco wasn't toxic!

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  10. My Ma used to tell me that worrying was like being on a wooden rocking horse...you could go ride all night long and be no further forward in the morning..so why bother.

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    1. Worrying for the right reason ought to result in timely action. My biggest fault has been not worrying about the right things soon enough.

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  11. Glad that the worry was for naught. I have been in your shoes apropos seemingly needless worry. It's a relief when all goes off without a hitch, for sure.

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    1. Worries as small as those are really a form of neurosis!

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