Time to Think
Dad was a Yorkshire farmer, born and bred. Memories of him are linked to places with wonderful sounding names like, Jimmy Longs, Moses, Wattrey Field, Back, Middle and Fenwick Lanes and many more. These are the places of my childhood, before farming became heavily mechanised. We were a large family and all but Mam were expected to work on the farm.
The most boring job of all was 'singling', which fell to the youngest child and I was that child for eight years. The task entailed me following Dad as he hoed the sugar beet and turnips. He would make his strike leaving little clumps of seedlings and weeds that I would single out leaving the strongest seedling. On and on we would go, row after row. After school and at weekends I would go out alone to single what Dad had hoed during the day. Thoughts were consumed with resentment at being there and longing to do anything else but this.
When brother John hoed alongside Dad it was better even though I had two rows to single at the same time. I would listen to them planning what they might do when they 'came up on the Pools'. Dad also told us the joys of hoeing that we might come to understand one day.
During the hoeing season Dad would be up around 4 a.m. to hoe for three hours before 'fothering', milking and then breakfast. He said that those three hours, alone in the field, gave him time to cogitate on the new day. He was able to consider all sorts of unlikely possibilities with a clear and fresh mind. Even then in the 1950s he felt that the world was moving too quickly without people taking time to think about what they were doing and the consequences of their actions. He felt that many good ideas were wasted because they hadn't been given enough thought. Those three hours each morning were a time of creativity for Dad. He would have appreciated the Queen's response to Alice's claim in Lewis Carroll's 'Through the Looking Glass' that "one can't believe impossible things," to which the Queen replied, "I daresay you haven't had much practice. . . When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
Now, I appreciate those early lessons about the benefits of cogitating. Time need never be wasted and waiting is a gift. This particular Thought for the Month emerged whilst ill in bed unable even to read or listen the radio. I still have much work to do on developing skills that go against the trend of having to get things done yesterday. This month I shall try to think six impossible things before breakfast each day and next month let you know what the results have been.
The Unitarian - March 2005 - "Thought for the Month" by Joan Wilkinson