The idea came one August morning when I stopped to chat with a neighbour in our village High Street. After a week of rain, suddenly we were enjoying one of those absolutely perfect days that make living with our English climate so worthwhile. A cloudless sky, the trees touched with gold, the only sound that of a combine harvester gathering in the summer crop.
I
was on my usual dash for the daily paper, she was dressed for
walking, complete with water bottle and binoculars.
'That's
what I should be doing on a day like this,' I said, 'but I ought to
mow the lawn and tackle the weeds.'
'Oh,
I don't do Oughts,' she said airily. 'I'm too old for all that.'
And
that started me wondering. At what age are we entitled to give up on
Oughts? At seventy? Surely that significant birthday gives us a good
excuse for relinquishing a few Oughts? And then a few more each year?
Or
why not get rid of the lot, all in one mad defiant gesture?
It's
not as if Oughts bring us pleasure - oh, perhaps afterwards there's a
fleeting satisfaction at a job well done, but they're such dreary
things.
Of
course, after getting rid of them there's a vacuum to be filled, so
much spare time, so many empty days.
And
that started me thinking about all the simple pleasures that could
take their place, and the amazing number of them that are actually
free.
From
there I began considering those who might gain the most from a
No-Ought philosophy. Older people. People living alone. People on
limited incomes.
So
. . . In my notebook I now have the first jottings for a new
non-fiction book, a guide for those like my friend who believe that
our only Ought should be that we ought not to do Oughts.
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