in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it’s
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it’s
spring
and
the

goat-footed

balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee

e.e. cummings

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Aah, the wonderful signs of Spring.

Come, gentle Spring! ethereal Mildness! come.

James Thomson

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May.

Shakespeare, Sonnet 18

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What is it about blogs? How come I feel I have a responsibility to write? I’ve been too busy since I last wrote to launch my blog application and put a few words in the window - it’s all serious, grown-up, work-related busy-ness, I hasten to add - and yet this darned blog lurks, the neglected child of my thoughts, demanding attention and, dammit, demanding to be fed some of the precious word-stuff that my mind produces when pressed, nay squeezed.

Now, about this busy-ness thing. I attend a fair few meetings as part of my work, and I tend to see the same people at these meetings. One of the standard replies to the question ‘How are you?’ is ‘Busy!’ Now, it’s not just the word ‘busy’, but it’s the tone in which we say it - and I have to admit I do this too. We always say we’re busy in a way that indicates both regret and self-importance. Because I’m important, the sub-text goes, I’m a busy person. The busier I am, the more important. And it’s terribly tiring and wearing and I wish I could spend my life lying on a beach in the Caribbean, but someone has to be important and busy…

So, perhaps we should develop a meetings index. The index would somehow quantify and combine the number of meetings, the importance of the person/people with whom one meets, and the nature of the meeting. So, a meeting with the Prime Minister to discuss defence policy would be a high scoring meeting, whereas a meeting with Home Office officials about what ministers of religion should do in the event of pandemic ‘flu would score somewhat lower.

A high status person, an ‘important’ person, would be one with a high meetings index, and the rest of us would suffer pangs of status envy in the presence of such a mighty one. Our object in life then becomes to raise our meetings index and thus reduce our status envy.

The only fault with the meetings index is that it is invisible. We can see the size and make of other people’s cars: your Mercedes SLR McLaren is clearly gives you the right to more road space and city-centre parking than my Honda Accord; and your seven-bedroom house makes me look at my modest bungalow with disgust. So, how to visualize the meetings index?

Well, we use the ‘busy-ness’ trope in our greetings and drop subtle hints into our conversations: ‘I didn’t see you at No. 10 on Monday’ would be enough to trigger a major status envy attack in the insecure person with a lower meetings index.

But then I have this fantasy that I could bust the system by saying, with insouciance, that I’m not busy at all, that I’ve come reluctantly from my Caribbean beach - perhaps at the request of the Prime Minister - to attend this meeting.

Technorati Tags: blogging, politics

Technorati Tags: meetings, status envy