“If the children don’t grow up
Our bodies get bigger but our hearts get torn up
We’re just a million little god’s causin’ rain storms
Turnin’ every good thing to rust
I guess we’ll just have to adjust”
- ‘Wake Up’ Arcade Fire
delight
verb
please (someone) greatly
“ ..a visit to Monaghan is an experience to delight all but the most jaded of bores.”
noun
great pleasure
“…Tyrone beating Mayo caused all the little boys to squeal with delight..”
I had to look up the definition of ‘delight’ as I was beginning to think that I lived in an alternate universe where the meaning of the word meant something completely different to what I’d always held it to be.
My confusion was caused by various messages, posts and announcements that I randomly received via email, the post, LinkedIn, Facebook and what not over one day, yesterday.
“Delighted to announce that our Pick, Pack & Ship eCommerce fulfillment solution, Shove IT, has been adopted by the McDoobies Haberdashery Group to power their eCommerce warehouse operations and future growth plans.”
Really ?
This has filled you with great, squeal worthy joy ?
“Delighted to be invited to join (insert various people’s names here) and ( insert some company names ) on the (niche industry) webinar this morning.”
Happy perhaps, honoured even, but feeling the rapture ?
No ,, I don’t know why that annoyed me so much either. In the grand scheme of things it seems harmless I suppose, and maybe it was just one of those weeks where one thing going wrong, led to another thing going wrong, and then everything on the news is terrible, no one resigns any more, your hip is sore, you pretend to enjoy walking, but you’re starting to resent other people running…with their proper working hips….and is it just your imagination or is your SoulMate doing extra training and longer runs now that you can’t …someone told you how many calories are in a blueberry muffin AFTER you’d eaten it AND they bought it for you in the first place, people are putting on concerts for CowShite bands again, a commentator on the BBC has just referred to a 25 year old who finished second in the 1500m in the Diamond League Zurich as “ …getting on a bit “, and you go to buy a white shirt and Robert, the best salesperson in the world, gently escorts you away from the lovely Remus Uomo display of slim and tapered white shirts, up the steps, where you remember him taking your Dad to get his shirts….and then….
And then she gives you that look.
She moves closer.
She gently rubs your cheek.
And everything is OK.
God, I love that cat.
No not Pasta, Tuna. Pasta tries to kill me on a daily basis.
And out of nowhere an email comes through, a nice chap that followed an old blog you used to write, asks if he can use a story you wrote about the stock market years ago…which involved monkeys, my brother Stephen, and a horse called Cigar. You say that you are delighted. And you are, really. I did squeal. Someone remembered something I’d written 5 years ago ? How fecking delightful is that ???
And then the Council, God bless them, approve a wee idea that the Drumlin Giants had to show a few free movies in Rossmore Park with loads of free popcorn and drinks for the tiny hoomans that use the park, and you hint at it on the Drumlin Giants Facebook page , with a wee competition for a Drumlin Giants sweatshirt and within an hour 63 people have commented with suggestions for movies… all of which are wrong…and you know that that sweatshirt is yours…because the Giants are letting you pick the movie !
What is that tingly feeling ?
DELIGHT !
Toodles,
Paul
P.S. This is the ‘stock market’ story. I can’t remember where I’d heard it first :
A man enters a jungle village and offers the local farmers $10 for every monkey that they can bring him. The locals think he is mad as there are monkeys everywhere and quickly gather up all the monkeys close by the village and the man duly gives them $10 for each one. The locals now have cash and it’s not worth the effort to go hunting monkeys and promptly return to farming.
The man now offers them $20 per monkey, so the villagers are happy to down tools and go further afield and catch monkeys again. They gather lots more and get paid more but once again, the monkeys become scarce and not worth the effort so the villagers go back to tending their fields.
The man now offers $25 per monkey but after one or two forays deep into the jungle without catching sight of the once plentiful monkeys the villagers quickly give up.
The next day the man announces that he is heading off to the city for a few days but that his assistant will remain and that he is now offering $50 per monkey which he will settle up for upon his return. Once the man is out of sight the assistant turns to the villagers and says “Listen, the man has so many monkeys in the cages now he doesn’t know how many he has already. I’ll sell you the monkeys for $35 each and when he comes back you can sell them to him again for $50.Easy money.”
The villagers gather up all of their money and even borrow money from neighbouring villages and buy all of the monkeys from the assistant. The assistant strolls into the jungle later that night and the villagers never see him or the man again.
And that ,my dear friend, is the stock market.
I told this story to my brother Stephen a long time ago and he loved it. A few months later we were visiting our friends in Gloucester and a gang of us went out for dinner that evening. At the end of the meal Stephen decided to tell this story. One of our hosts was going to the bar so I went with him to help him back with the drinks. We chatted at the bar for a while and when we returned to the table the story was still in full flight with everyone hanging on Stephen’s every word. As I sat down I was surprised to hear that the monkeys were now trading at $1,000 each and he was regaling everyone with tales of what ‘the man’ was getting up to in the city. Our hosts were laughing out loud as Stephen told them of the Man’s escapade in an expensive house of ill repute in the city which I think also featured cameos by David Niven, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Errol Flynn and a horse called Cigar. As the others laughed Stephen leaned back in his chair and whispered “I thought you’d never get back ! How does this bloody story finish again ?”
