Extraordinary things

Work frequently seems difficult. It involves the application of thought, often against the clock; decisiveness, often on behalf of others in circumstances in which the decision has direct financial or other commercial consequences for them; and a significant commitment of time. When it is really bad (I worked all night last Thursday) I tell myself that there are worse things and that, anyway, these periods of extreme pressure pass and are forgotten as one gets on with the next job.

One of the things I find most perspective inducing is the First World War, or more particularly the way in which those who fought in it seemed to cope, having been removed from ordinary life, with its extraordinary extremes.

My book club book this month is "Goodbye to All That" by Robert Graves - this is, if you'll excuse the pun, a choice of relative gravity after "The Destinies of Darcy Dancer, Gentleman" which is what we read last month. I read, a year or two ago, Captain James Dunn's "The War the Infantry Knew". Both Graves and Dunn record, in different ways, the life in the trenches of The Royal Welch Fusiliers. It was a different age and lives and the attitudes of people have, of course, changed enormously. Both books however illustrate the capacity of ordinary people to do the extraordinary when required. So, if so many ordinary people could go off and live and fight (and frankly the going off and living seems extraordinary enough to me without the fighting) in rat infested, muddy holes in France and Belgium for years while being shot at, gassed and bombed by a hostile enemy, the odd night up in a relatively comfortable office, shuffling paper can't really be a problem.