Busy Doing Nothing

In my two-days-a-week voluntary job helping in a warehouse, I occasionally encounter cages, tall metal-mesh containers on wheels to help in transporting goods around the building.  Usually these things have two fixed wheels and two that swivel and, as a result, rather like the proverbial recalcitrant supermarket trolley, a cage can sometimes seem to have a mind of its own when it comes to getting it to go where you want it.  In fairness, this - as in the retail comparison just made - is often the result of bad maintenance.  

[I once caused some amusement in the office when exasperated at the obstinacy of a plastic bin (the younger sibling of the cage).  After I'd used the contents of the bin, I went to the workshop area and borrowed a couple of spanners; returning to the empty container where I had left it, inverted on the office floor, I proceeded to remove one of the wheels from its bearing and unwind therefrom a pair of tights that had become entangled, before replacing it and returning a much healthier article to the parking area.]

Sometimes a loaded cage can be a heavy challenge for one person and a few weeks ago, my supervisor asked me to help her get one up a slope and through a narrow door.  With one of us pulling backward and the other pushing forward, and neither able to see what the other was doing, the task wasn't exactly easy for the two of us.  Once the slope had been negotiated and the cage was 'stuck' in the doorway, but at least on level ground, she left me to it, simply moving small obstacles out of my path as I steered it into place.

Afterwards, having thanked me for my help, she added, "I don't really know what would have made that job easier."  I fear my reply, though factual and constructive, was an impossibility and could certainly have been much better phrased.  "Having one mind between the two of us would have helped."  What I meant was that part of the difficulty was that, as each of us tried to work out which way to steer our own side, we were often working against each other instead of one taking the lead and instructing the other in a common plan.

As I recall this situation, my mind drifts back some thirty or forty years to a church 'event' that was carried out by a collection of eight men of varying abilities, assembled as a result of an appeal for volunteers, rather than a co-ordinated recruiting exercise.  The task was to remove the font from the place where it had stood for centuries to a new site some twenty yards or so distant, where it would be much more convenient in the late twentieth century.  

By some means now lost in the fogginess of memory, the eight of us had managed to lift this stone monster from the floor and were then guided by a ninth person (probably the parson) to convey it to precisely the right spot, and facing the correct way round, before allowing it to descend gently and safely to the floor.  I'm pleased to report that this was done with no injury to either carriers or carried and, so far as I know, it is still standing today where we left it all those years ago.

My point is, however, that it can sometimes make a job easier if one person is not actively engaged in its execution.  A more ancient example of this truth is a musical one that I'm pleased to say graces my somewhat esoteric collection of recorded music ... viz. the Sea Shanty.  Unversed as I am in nautical terms, I wouldn't know a sheet from a halyard, but I am aware that the hauling of a rope by a body of men is much more efficient if it follows a distinct and appropriate rhythm pounded out by the communal singing of a well known chorus, punctuated by pithy verses contributed by a non-pulling comrade, possibly armed with a squeeze-box.

A rambling - almost sea-faring! - tale like this has to have a moral to draw it to a conclusion and that is simply this.  When it comes to the defeat of our present arch-enemy, Covid-19, while the gallant efforts of the NHS and the test-and-trace people are on the 'doing end' of the fight, their efforts can be very much helped by the non-active participation of people like you and me, as we follow the mantra of keeping ourselves in our 2-metre spaces, washing our hands well and often, and wearing a mask when necessary.