Well not much happened on Thursday. I went to work came home ate, fell asleep on the couch, woke up in time to see the cricket and then went to bed. Pretty much the same happened on Friday except I got an email from a guy I met in Greece. My other friend the Traveller and me stayed at his place for a few days when we were there a few years ago. I will call him the Greek although he is English but he has been living In Molai for 40 years. The Greek has been trying to set his own business up for a long time and works incredibly long hours and never misses any opportunity to promote himself and the business. He has never got rich in spite of his efforts and long hours. He has tried to persuade me on many times to become an agent selling water filters one year to biological waste disposal units the next. Well I got this email asking about vibrators and did I have any information on them? I gladly sent off as many URL’s as I could shaking my head and shuddering at what venture he had come up with this time but wishing him the best of luck with it.
I wish I could say that hard work and long hours pay off but it doesn’t in the vast majority of cases, Sadly, it’s down to luck. Just ask any miner who had to work 12 and 16 hour shifts when there were still coalmines in the UK. Its not about how hard or how long you work. If this were true then any one who worked over 12 hours a day for a sustained period of time would be rich. People who say you make your own luck have got it wrong. If this was true we could all envisage the winning numbers on the next lottery or the finishing horse in the next big race. This actually got me thinking about the unfairness of life.
My mate the tiler used to breed budgies and two of his best budgies were a Mr Grey and Mr Purple. Mr Grey was a real character and after being chosen to breed with a hen he would do his courtship dance, get down to the bristles, shoot his load and be banging his beak on the breeding cage to get out and onto the next one. He really was one of the boys, get the job done and then out with the lads. Thinks of James Dean or Marlon Brando in the wild one and you get the picture. A real tearaway and the sort that made hens go weak at the knees.
Mr Purple was also a great breeder but totally different. He would woo his hens and stay with them after the eggs had hatched and help the hen to feed the chicks. You could almost imagine him planning what school they would go to when they had feathers and what occupation they would have and be discussing pension plans for them with the hen. Mr Purple would breed with any hen he was put in with and some were downright ugly, even MR grey would take one look and turn his beak up at these, but Mr Purple woo’d them into submission, got on with the job and stayed with them to the end. In short he was the kind of budgie most hens would be proud to take home to mum and dad, unlike Mr Grey. Think of David Niven or Carey Grant and you get the picture.
Unfortunately it was later discovered that Mr Purple had a genetic defect. He had French moult and this made all the feather of the chicks he had sired fall out and they could not fly. He was ok and did not suffer but it meant he could never be used as breeding bird again. To avoid infection of the rest of the flock he was sold, probably to some little grey haired old lady who would keep him in a small cage and call him Joey. Sadly it was a really undignified end for such Herculean efforts.
Whatever the Greek is up to now I wish him the best but cant help feeling that he will end up like Mr Purple and maybe even myself scratching around and wondering why we never got the breaks and only bad luck in spite of our best endeavours