Dust off the saddle. Strap on the riding boots, prepare the bridle and slip into your best pair of jodhpurs. While you’re at it, oil up the spurs and fix your preferred crash helmet firmly to your noggin. Why? Because it’s time to get on the high horse. And once firmly seated astride that mighty steed, I plan to ride that thing into the sunset; its hooves cracking against the bedrock of reason and logic, together we will gallop great distances until all those who resist us collapse with exhaustion.
Dust off the saddle. Strap on the riding boots, prepare the bridle and slip into your best pair of jodhpurs. While you’re at it, oil up the spurs and fix your preferred crash helmet firmly to your noggin. Why? Because it’s time to get on the high horse. And once firmly seated astride that mighty steed, I plan to ride that thing into the sunset; its hooves cracking against the bedrock of reason and logic, together we will gallop great distances until all those who resist us collapse with exhaustion.
There’s nothing I love more than a little bit of righteous indignation. Frankly, any excuse that I have to get up on my high horse is welcomed. It used to be that I assumed an air of moral superiority only in the most pressing of circumstances. However, I have noticed a disturbing trend in which I will immediately seek refuge on the high moral ground with the slightest provocation.
Take my ring tone. I don’t particularly remember how it is that I settled on the ringtone for my mobile. For all I know it’s the ‘default’ setting. But as far as I’m concerned, its ‘default’ status has been well earned and deserves a little respect. Recently, however, someone else in my immediate office area has adopted the very same ringtone. I consider this an act of absolute barbarism. It means that I am forever thinking that my phone is calling my name from various geographical points.
There should be rules against such acts of naked aggression. Or, if not rules, then an unfettered right to retaliate. Granted, I could probably reset my ringtone but why should I? Or, for that matter, how do I? Whilst I realise that kids today change their ringtones as frequently and as easily as they change their shirts or violate international copyright law, these are things to which I have given the scantest of scant attention.
Previously, I never really gave any thought to my ringtone. Now it is all that I think about. I hear it in my dreams. At first I thought that I would do as everyone else seems to do and set up a website to protest my cause, www.stopusingmyringtone.com. I’m yet to get any hits as such and the forum page remains as empty as the world’s loneliest bar. Clearly, the power of the internet has been greatly overstated. There must be another way.
It is difficult to know how to settle such a dispute. The days of challenging others to a duel have, largely speaking, behind us. Even an invitation to ‘paper, rock, scissors’ can be regarded as inappropriate for the workplace. Instead, I am left to trot gently by, firmly seated in my saddle, nose aloft as the ringtone that sounds a lot like mine echoes across the office.
If only my desire to seat myself on the elevated equine was limited to ring tones. Recently, a sticker appeared on my milk that declared it was ‘permeate free’. I was unsure if this meant that the product contained none of the substance in question or whether I was getting a supply of permeate for nothing. As some kind of a bonus. The sticker did not see fit to explain. Despite this scarcity of information, I was supposed to know whether having permeate in your milk was a good or bad thing. I don’t recall being taught anything about permeates in school. To me it sounds like a particular kind of hairstyle from 1987. As I recall, back then, all the girls in my class had remarkable permeates. I can picture them now, hair aloft and reaching for the ceiling in our school photo. But if a permeate is not a hairstyle, then I am officially flummoxed. They assume I know too much.
If there’s one thing that gets me on my high horse, it’s assumed knowledge. In fact, more than just putting me on my high horse, it also gets my goat. This, of course, becomes quite difficult, as trying to restrain a live, belligerent goat on an equally hostile thoroughbred is no easy task. In fact, it’s so difficult that I have begun to resent it. And resentment is something that totally gets my gander. It’s not just the fact of getting my gander as much as what it does with my gander once it’s in its nasty little hands. Those who take ganders that don’t belong to them as clearly a societal menace and should be stopped as a matter of priority.
Now on my high horse, balancing my goat and searching for my gander which has been kidnapped by person or persons unknown, I am determined to get to the bottom of things. I am, in fact, like a dog with a bone. This of course, frightens the goat, which immediately scarpers. The absence of anything resembling opposable digits means that the horse is now nigh-on impossible to control. This makes me feel like a complete goose. Having found my goose, I am still in search of my gander, albeit on a directionless nag that is wandering about the countryside. I tell you, it’s a state of affairs that has really put the cat amongst the pigeons. The goat, naturally enough, thinks this is hilarious.
All this mayhem because of a lousy sticker on my milk telling me that it is ‘permeate free’. It is clear what I should do. I must give up the gander, surrender the goose, yield the goat and put the high horse out to pasture. It is time to give it a rest, at least for a while. I should start by being a little kinder to myself, to various metaphorical animals and, indeed, to other people. In fact, perhaps I’ll make some phone calls and cheer some people up. If they don’t answer, I’ll leave a message. I will, of course, turn my phone to ‘vibrate’. I suppose I don’t really need that ringtone after all. Not every battle is worth fighting. Not every affront deserves the high horse.