Old Habits
Saturday morning. I’m sitting having a brew with Mary, planning our day and discussing what’s on.
Old habits. I got most of mine back in the 80s in the army.
In those days, “squared away” was everything. It meant you were ready for whatever came. Kit immaculate, packed, ready to move. Discipline meant never leaving a job for later. Organisation first, relaxation second.
Knowing your rifle magazines sat in your left pouch mattered. Knowing your doss bag lived in the bottom of your Bergen mattered. Knowing where the teabags were? Essential.
When we got the shout for an operational tour with the UN in Cyprus, we had a few hours’ notice. The unit mobilised in minutes. We didn’t know how long we’d be gone, but we knew where we were going, what we needed, and off we went.
That sticks. Years later, people at work thought I was unhinged because my desk stayed tidy. Squared away. Like the old days.
When my son trained to be an electrician, I told him to organise his toolbox so he could lay his hand on any tool in the dark. Today his van is a mobile workshop. Proper order.
I work remotely now. My desk is bare wood and a laptop. Notebooks sit in sequence, pages numbered. Books sit by topic.
The only place I allow entropy to creep in is the man drawer. That must be chaos. Spectacles from three prescriptions ago. Spare screws from flat-pack furniture. Allen keys for machinery long since chucked out. By definition, corralling the chaos into one drawer still counts as squared away.
It sounds obsessive. It isn’t. It’s simply doing the work early so you’re ready. Fail to plan, plan to fail. If a morning turns into a faff because I wasn’t organised, it does my head in.
People take the piss, but my grandfather was the same. A soldier in the Great War, a firefighter in the Blitz. His shed was a masterpiece. Labelled spice jars for every screw. Screwdrivers racked strictly by size.
You didn’t survive the Somme like he did without knowing where the essentials were.
I’m off to make another brew. The kettle is full. The teaspoon is clean. I sorted both when I made the last one.
Squared away. The only way to be.