Eye off the Ball!

Last Saturday, I watched a football match at a lower league than is lately my custom.  The difference was more noticeable than I'd expected.  As I mused later, on each team there were three or four players who 'knew what they were doing' or, as one player who had been substituted at half-time, was already changed and was watching the closing stages from the stand, observed, 'they think football'.  One evidence of this was the way that some would turn their heads away and let the high ball hit their head, rather than skilfully use their head to affect the direction of the ball's travel.

The same trait can be devastating in cricket, where it's imperative for the batsman to keep his eye on the ball from bowler's hand to bat, or risk it passing him by and splattering his wicket ... or worse, hitting him on the head!

It's true of life, too, as I discovered twice this week.  I recently realised that in a collection of about 900 books that adorn my flat, there are several that either will never get read, or have been read and are unlikely to be read again.  Consequently I've sold a few on line, and donated a far greater number to charities in the town, with the knock-on effect that the total has reduced by about 15% and one complete bookcase has been made redundant.  As I went through this exercise, I disposed of volumes that I had bought as a result of a passing whim, or a project long since abandoned either through lack of interest or the counter-attraction of something else.

During the course of this moderate de-cluttering exercise, I shed a lot of loose papers, too.  The discovery amidst them of one snippet that I wanted to keep sent me to what passes for a diary, since that seemed the most appropriate place to store my find.  As I searched for the exact spot, I browsed some of the writings of what is now very much a passed age.  There was very little of interest to the modern, happily-retired me.  It was virtually all work-related: picked this up, waited for that, went to one place, then another; expressions of frustration at having to wait hours for something to turn up ... no indication of how those hours were spent, or the passing of the seasons.

That said, there was the occasional note of relief, for it happened that the right spot for that discovered document was but days away from the momentous occasion - reported on this blog at some time, I'm sure - when I at last broke through a significant brick-wall in my family research and discovered my great-uncle at Colchester barracks in the 1871 census ... he who had been so elusive since his last record at home ten years earlier.

The impression given by that diary record of only eight years ago was, however, of someone almost completely inward-looking; even that sliver of relief was self-focused.  Who else, after all, would be interested in an ordinary nineteenth-century soldier whose greatest achievement (so far as I've been able to find out, anyway) was to drop a target on his trigger-finger and thus gain his discharge, enabling him to settle down to a quiet family life in a small Irish town?

For many a year, I fear, I had taken my eye off the 'ball' of normal life.  And, although I'm only too aware of many things that lack the ideal level of attention, I'm glad to say that - in my own opinion, at least - I've been able to achieve a much more balanced existence in my retirement.