Invoking Positive happenstance

 

Well, some things are so regular that they mark the turning of the year in a private way that make them as special to the individual as the public celebrations of the Nine Lessons and Carols from Kings, or the family delight when the last unwanted cousin is turfed out just after Boxing Day.  For me it is the annual visit to the local Watch House to bail out St Audrey’s, Latin Master, Glevum, from the gaol cell he always ends up on.  Poor soul, something takes hold of him whenever he sees a display in the window of a shop showing the stable our Lord, whatever the Good Book says, was born in and declaring ‘The Reason from the Season.’  He is usually   apprehended shouting ‘Sol Invictus’ and, to be fair, he makes good the damage and is contrite when he comes to his senses. 

It was on one these visits that I ran into Flitchy.  He was trying to remember where he left his jalopy and was hoping some one had stolen it as it seemed the quickest way of finding it.  Well, one thing let to another and soon we were making our way to his office in town.  Now you, like I, probably had assumed Flitchy was a man of independent means.  I knew he had ‘expectations’, as we used to say, Unfortunately the nag he had those expectations of failed to arrive in time at the 3.30  at Doncaster, a feat it repeated at Goodwood, Thirsk and Great Yarnmouth.  Forced on his own resources he turned, like so many who have more self belief than talent, to give advice to others.

I have to say I wasn’t keen on his office.  It was one of those modern numbers, all garish colours and conceptual art.  Never trusted conceptual art.  Seems to want to make the viewer so all the work wondering what the blasted thing was and is therefore a bit of a skive for the artist.  Flitchy said it made the people he worked for think they were being ‘thrusting’, whatever that means.  I was at a bit of a loss at to what he was good at, other than being obtuse, but apparently that's what he is paid for.  It is the case that these days all manner of institutions are not happy with just opening the shutters and selling things to people, they need a motto.  Enter Flitchy.  He says he stumbled on it by chance.  Asked by some cove what he should put on the letter head on his new Academy Flitchy ventured ‘Inspiring Old Novelty’.  A week later he received an order to the sum of 50 guineas and an enterprise was born.

Things started well and got better. After a few false starts he found the vaguer the better. Three barely connected words gave people a sense of purpose and gravitas which bucked them up, without committing them to any concrete actions.  His words spread across the realm, three at a time.

We have now invented a game for extended car travel.  Before setting out each player has to come up with ten, three-word mottos, such ‘Outstanding Retrograde Precision’.  You then get a point for each of these thirty words seen on a Public Institutions edifice. Variants of these allow for a bonus of three if your word has not been picked by anyone else and a further five points if it turns out to be one of Flitchy’s.

Business is a cruel mistress and punishes the forgetful.  A month in he found he had been paid to give an Institution of Education and an Environmental Disposal Management the same slogan - ‘A Brighter Better Now’.  He got round it by explaining that the former was a typo and should have been ‘Know’ not Now’ but it was a close shave.  To get round this he came up with a chart, which I attach.  A few dice rolled and a slogan is made.  Once in a while you need to add an ‘and’ or ‘but’ the principal is sound and avoids repeats.

Thus Flitchy has made progress in the world and is able to purchase life’s little luxuries, such as the odd bottle of Vega-Sicilia Unico Magnum, the 2013 vintage, or a property portfolio in Surrey.