I did not know until one minute ago that this line was written by Ian Fleming, and I did not remember until one minute ago that it begins with the word “happenstance”. It’s a fine word. But the line is that “once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.”<\/p>\n
You know the line, even if you only half-remember it like me and just imagine writing a line that gets even half-remembered. I adore that I half-remembered it, went to check, and learnt all this. I cannot get enough of finding out anything, whether it’s because I want to say it to you, or just because.<\/p>\n
But speaking of because.<\/p>\n
The reason I half-remembered this is that something has now happened twice. Or near enough. This week someone asked me how old I was and did so specifically because they were surprised I was interested and enthusiastic about something. Not long ago, someone else of around my age — I’m 60 — was equally and vocally surprised that I wasn’t, as he put it, just circling the drain.<\/p>\n
If I’m supposed to be glum and fixated and uninterested, but I’m not, then I think there has to be part of me that just wants to preen at you. Only, it’s also frightening. Just because it isn’t true now, maybe tomorrow I’ll be like that. Maybe tomorrow I’ll be all about how things were better in my day. I thought this was my day.<\/p>\n
It’s frightening because being closed to anything and everything is such a ferocious waste. I grant you that we’re not living in the greatest of worlds at the moment, but there is still so much that is fantastic. Everyone is so interesting. Everything is so interesting, absolutely everything.<\/p>\n
Except football.<\/p>\n
But then while I do mean that, I am also conscious that the football part is a joke I’ve said a lot. It’s my line and I do have a few of those. Such as how if you and I even pass in the street for long enough, you will have heard me say that I do not expect to be remembered when I’ve left a room. But I don’t. Even I am a bit bored of my saying that I’d rather talk about you than me, I know all about me, I was there, I saw me do it, but the thing is that yes, I would infinitely rather talk about you.<\/p>\n
Says William as he rabbits on about himself yet again.<\/p>\n
There is so much to learn, to relish, to just be really happy finding out, I don’t understand how anyone can think anything else. I am afraid of thinking it.<\/p>\n
Mind you, now I’m afraid that I’m sounding like an arse. Look at me, I’m so wonderfully excited about everything, even as I myself actually do bugger-all. It would be so good to have a sentence now that began with but.<\/p>\n
Yet, okay, let me give you an example of what excites me and you can see that it is preposterous, you can see that it’s not worth anything more than an uh-huh. I”m researching a TV show called “Lou Grant”, which is the show that made me want to be a writer so this is a very big deal for me, and as it happens, every episode had a one-word title. It’s like the way “Friends” named every episode as “The One With” or “Where” or whatever, it was a thing, and in the case of “Lou Grant”, no one ever mentioned it and certainly didn’t explain it.<\/p>\n
I now know why the show did it.<\/p>\n
It was a drama set around a newspaper and the one-word episode titles were a homage to what journalists refer to as a slug. To this day I write slugs constantly: it’s the one or maybe a few words that log the article you’re writing. So that you and your editor can say yes, yes, the crash story is in progress, or I’m waiting for a call back on the wolf article.<\/p>\n
That’s it. That’s all. I do not think this has changed your day. Yet when I found out, when a producer on the show told me, I danced.<\/p>\n
Don’t tell me we ever have to stop dancing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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