Remember the modest hero, who, when asked why he pushed a pea up the side of one of the Great Pyramids with his nose, replied, "I did it becod it wad dere"?
This attitude toward the strange achievements of mankind has aroused much discussion as to what makes them do it and made a fortune for the compilers of the Guinness Book Of Records.
The diagnosis of these impulses is a favourite topic of conversation around any gathering of Homo sapiens and a typical example is at the breakfast table of the drivers. The conversation here usually follows a set pattern. Sport, sex, last night's telly, sex, reflections on the doubtful parentage of some supervisors, sex, money, sex and thoughts on whether the sausages were dead when they hit the fat or did they die as a direct result of incineration. (Only joking, Cook!).
We have ardent followers of various pastimes among our members and while the universal subject of sex is discussed at odd moments, it's only talked about, whereas, other sports are actively participated in. We pride ourselves on being a serious debating group.
One member, an ardent angler*, who is highly proficient on the necessary ability of narrative (a must for the first class fisherman) was holding the attention of the company one morning with an enthralling account of the previous day's catch. Do not for one moment, imagine that his speech was a mere placing of the facts and figures before the assembled company. Such mundane efforts are for Hansard or the records of the minutes of any committee meeting. He laid before us a story, nay, a saga worthy of Dennis Wheatley** at his descriptive best. The pre-battle study of the haunts and environment of the prey, reports from outlying weather stations, the intensive research into the feeding habits of the species, the careful selection of suitable baits and methods of presentation, the all important decisions on the type of tackle and methods of angling to be made, the stalking of the prey in a manner that Tarzan could not have bettered, all told in great detail prior to the actual account of the final coup-de-grace. Then, with a great sense of timing, when interest was on the wane, the story of the strike, the bending of the rod the leaping, twisting, diving and fighting of the crafty, courageous monster of the deep, until that final ecstatic moment when it lay exhausted and defeated in the bank, a gallant adversary whose weight and size were statistics of incredulous disbelief. All garnished with the rolling up of the sleeves to show the bruising resultant from the muscle strain which was a natural hazard of the contest.
One of the golfing members, who had paused in the delicate operation of the mopping up the remains of his fried egg and bacon fat with a piece of toast, said "What did it taste like?"
Our piscatorial member looked puzzled. "Taste like?" He queried.
"S'right", said the golfer, "taste like, You eat 'em, don't you?"
Horrified understanding dawned on the face of the angler, and he stared at this heretic, who had suggested something tantamount to mugging one's grannie.
"Course I don't eat 'em", he gritted between his teeth.
"Well, what do you do with 'em?" asked the company in one voice.
"Put them back of course, what the hell do you think?"
An excited buzz of conversation flew round the table as the meeting realised that once again the unexplainable urges of mankind had manifested itself, and many future discussions could be foreseen as a result of this revelation of the angler which ranked on a level with the highest mysteries of mankind's irrational behaviour.
As duty called, and we all trooped out to perform the commonplace tasks of earning a crust, leaving behind the debris of the breakfast table, over which hung the faintly audible aura of those immortal words, which put the whole in perspective -
" I did it becod it was dere".
Notes:
* I can't help but wonder if this is a piece of autobiographical self-analysis
** Dennis Wheatley: once a massively popular author but now largely unread. By todays standards Wheatley's writing is pretty un-PC, and modern reissues subject to abridging. Notwithstanding that, Wheatley is still one of my favourite authors, I have a full set of his books on the shelf behind me as I type. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Wheatley
