This time it will be different

Has this ever happened to you?

Did you turn off the iron? Did I lock the back door? Have we checked the electric blanket in the spare room?
How often have the first hours of your holidays been spoilt by that rush of anxiety that you have perhaps overlooked some essential task before setting out? And it doesn’t necessarily go away with age or with practice.
Last week we set out on a holiday to Tasmania. We had plenty of time to prepare, so my anxiety syndrome got a really good workout. I decided, in the light of some earlier attacks, that this time I would make a list of all the necessary tasks. It finished with the words
Turn off hot water service.
Turn on alarm
Lock back door
Check garage doors.
I ticked off each item during the final three days, frustrated by the fact that many of the tasks had to be left until those few hours before departure. I turned off switches, pulled out plugs -something about power surges- decided which curtains to leave drawn, locked the windows and began to feel that this time I was going to be free of that awful “What have we forgotten ?” feeling.
This time we had covered every contingency. This time it would be different.
I stepped into the car with a surge of relief, watched the roller door reach the ground level - sometimes they can bounce back, you know - and drove down the lane to begin the journey.
We were on schedule and I mentioned to my wife with some relief that this time there would be no need for my characteristic anxiety attack.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, I remembered the upstairs air conditioner. I had turned it on when I was having an afternoon siesta and I couldn’t remember turning it off… and it hadn’t been on the list because we don’t normally use it in the daytime. What if it stayed on for the next fortnight.? What if it burned out and caused a fire? What if…? What if…?
This time I said nothing for a time, hoping that it would wear off as it usually did. We became caught up in heavy traffic, inching ahead every minute or so, and eventually I decided to share the anxiety with my long-suffering wife.
That was a help. Yes, she had been in the bedroom and noticed how hot it was. Surely if the air conditioner had been on she would not have felt the heat. And then I recalled having gone upstairs before we left to check that all the lights were off. Surely I would have noticed the purring of the air conditioner. The balance of evidence certainly favoured an assumption of
innocence, but how could I be sure?
The excitement of the boat trip and the drive to Strahan pushed the anxiety into the background, and when it did surface I comforted myself with the assurance that air conditioners are made to run for long periods and maybe when the room was cold enough it would at least cut out for a while.
Each time the anxiety emerged I went through all the reasons for discounting it. On the third morning, having woken with the nagging “what if” feeling, I sat down at the table, took out my journal and wrote a long account of the incident, hoping in this way to discard it for the duration of the holiday. And it was a success. By making fun of my neurosis, I somehow had managed to defuse its power. So we plunged into our day’s sightseeing with light hearts and a sense of relief.
It had been a rather persistent attack this time but now I had conquered it. Next holiday I would ensure that the list of things to be done before we left was even more carefully compiled and scrupulously ticked off. At last…..finally….. peace of mind!
That night, we were watching the TV news, keeping in touch with the world beyond Strahan. After the reports from Iraq and Canberra, a local item announced, accompanied by vivid pictures

TODAY A HOUSE IN HOBART WAS DESTROYED BY FIRE. IT IS BELIEVED THAT THE FIRE WAS CAUSED BY A FAULTY AIR CONDITIONER.

With a profound sense of defeat, I headed for the phone box
to ring our Melbourne neighbour.

Pedantry

What? Me a pedant?

No way. I’m simply someone who thinks people should
spell and write the Queen’s English as I do.

I guess it’s inevitable. I’ve spent years teaching high school students how to avoid the ubiquitous apostrophe, explaining the difference between stationery and stationary, and wondering why they can’t distinguish between practice and practise.

And there’s my Mother’s influence. Mum was still doing
The Age crossword in her 90’s and she was so concerned for accuracy in language that she once wrote to Barry Jones
pointing out that he had incorrectly used the subjunctive in a speech.

What hope then did I have of avoiding this affliction of
noticing spelling and grammar mistakes in a thousand places?
I call it an affliction because I don’t particularly enjoy
seeing these mistakes and I would be happy to overlook them
but my eye seems to be drawn unerringly to confectionary,
potatoe’s and all those other indications of human fallibility.

You won’t be surprised by my reaction to the notice in our
local park, where on my daily ride I glimpsed a shiny new sign, laminated on stone, with some five words on it. I had eyes for only one…..CEMETARY. I headed for home to check
my dictionary, wondering if, in my years of teaching year 8
Spelling, I had missed an alternative spelling. No, there was no
alternative. The new sign, in all its pristine glory, was wrong.
I rang the local Council and gently pointed out the mistake,
expecting that my short message left as a note on someone’s
voice mail would be enough to effect a correction within the
week. Days passed into weeks but the sign remained unchanged,
bringing a daily shudder as I trundled past on my old Malvern Star.

Three months later, in a further bout of civic responsibility,
I phoned again, this time giving more precise information about
the location of the sign. In a hardly subtle attempt at blackmail, I
suggested that local teachers would soon be bringing students to inspect the sign in a SPOT THE MISTAKES assignment,
hinting that this would not be good for the Council’s image

The sign remained, untouched……CEMETARY.

Months later, I put my concern in writing and sought a reply.
I wrote a detailed and respectful letter, including a map, and requested that the matter be brought to the attention of the
appropriate staff member.


And an answer came directly, with a promptness unexpected,
and I felt that I was making now some progress with the sign. In
speaking with the writer of the letter, who was most welcoming and
not at all defensive, I discovered that faults in signs are not altogether
rare and that the cost of changing this particular sign was hundreds of dollars. I enquired whether he would prefer me to creep round in the cover of darkness and make the necessary change at no cost to he Council. It was, after all, simply a matter of changing an A with an E. Assured that the change would be made, I felt my mission was accomplished. But still nothing happened.

Months passed.

Then, one day, I was shocked out of my resigned state when I
glanced on the way past the offending sign. It was offending no
longer. Someone , presumably an official, had corrected the spelling and it glowed in the morning sunlight….CEMETERY.


On reaching home I rang the Council officer and poured out my
gratitude. He was grateful for the call, but in his honesty he said he
was unaware that it had been fixed.

So, I continue my daily rides, no longer irritated when I pass
the sign. Rather, I am cheered by the experience which not only saw a correction of an official mistake but which also increased my
appreciation of the complexity of fixing signs and my respect for one
Council officer.

With people like me on the loose, we need people like him in
our municipal offices.

Mac Nicoll