Do you know exactly what you were doing at a specific time on Christmas Eve 45 years ago? Regardless of your age, it’s unlikely that you do! But the Badger does. He and his brothers were helping their father complete deliveries so that he could get home at a reasonable time on Christmas Eve. We’d started at 3am, and on completing the last delivery in the middle of the afternoon we were exhausted! The Badger remembers the time, location, the weather, and what we were wearing for this last delivery because one of his brothers had a 35mm camera with him and asked a passerby to take a photo of us in front of the delivery vehicle. That photo is date and time-stamped and is cherished by the Badger and his brothers.
What’s this got to do with ‘looking forward’? Well, the Badger’s father, who’s no longer with us, never made predictions about the year ahead. Being orphaned while an evacuee from London during the Second World War meant he dealt with life one day at a time. The unpredictability of the future world and his personal circumstances made not looking beyond tomorrow routine. He joined the Army as soon as he was old enough to, as he put it, ‘get an education, some semblance of structure and family, and to establish good life skills and standards’. He thrived, served in Germany and the Middle East, and only left the service to marry.
The Badger and his brothers frequently heard mantras rooted in his Army days and childhood experiences while growing up. Advice like ‘there’s no such thing as can’t, try’, ‘if you’re knocked back, pull yourself together and start again’, and ‘learn from your mistakes but don’t dwell on the past, look forward to the future’ were heard frequently. His favourites were ‘remember, if it looks wrong, feels wrong, smells wrong, or sounds wrong, then it’s wrong’, ‘if something untoward happens don’t ignore it, deal with it’, and ‘look forward, because you can’t change the past’. He often said he never made predictions about the future because he’d learned that the future never turned out the way anyone expected. The Badger has thus resisted the temptation to express any opinion about what 2025 will hold. While ‘look forward, because you can’t change the past’ continues to be a key ethos, his father was right – the future will almost certainly turn out to be different to what’s anticipated!
Thank you for reading the Badger’s Blog during 2024, and best wishes for Christmas and the New Year. The Badger and his brothers will be toasting those of the pre-internet/tech generation who are no longer with us because they provided a drumbeat of sound advice and wisdom that’s become much diluted in today’s world. Merry Christmas!
