Failure

 Fail to prepare, prepare to fail.

I could hear my Dad’s voice in my head, during a long Sunday afternoon walk. I didn’t really mind where I went but had searched a possible route and had my phone in case I got very lost. I was thinking about how I had nothing with me; no backpack; no bottle of water; no portable battery for my phone; no paper map. I did have my emergency fiver and my Oyster card in my coat’s secret top pocket but I didn’t think either of those would be much help in a field in Essex on a Sunday after 4pm. It was beginning to get dark,  I had probably mis-timed such a long walk and it was getting harder to read my book as I walked.

It was an unusual voice to have in my head. I wouldn’t have taken my Dad as someone who was overly prepared. He liked to ‘wing it’ as much as I do. If it had been the Long Suffering Husband’s voice that would have made more sense. The LSH never leaves the house without a spare pair of pants, a screwdriver set and a torch. Even my daughter, the list queen’s voice would have made sense but no, it was my Dad, there in the middle of a field, somewhere near Danbury accusing me of being a failure.

I’m not sure why it mattered, either. I had only gone for a walk. My reason for a long walk was three-fold. Firstly, I needed the headspace and there’s nothing like standing in a huge field with all that big sky to help with that and secondly, our school PTA (without the usual fetes and quiz nights to rely on) have come up with a whole school fundraising project where everyone does sponsored walking to rack up the miles to get to Lapland. I believe that when we get there we are going to kidnap Santa and keep him in our school bubble, which could be a problem because he’s quite old and I’m sure he’s best off where he is, protected from the coronavirus by the guard penguins. 

The third and final reason for my walk was that I had already been a failure. I woke up on Saturday morning, exhausted from constantly looking at my phone. I had become obsessed with the American election and was scrolling through Twitter, Facebook, the CNN website and even Instagram for clues. 

“I’m going to have a phone free day,” I declared to the LSH.

“That’s nice, dear,” he replied absentmindedly.

“Oh, look at all these lovely photos and all these nice walks everyone is going on,” I said, as I distractedly flipped through Facebook.

“I thought you were off social media today,” he said, surprising me because he had actually listened.

It’s much harder than you think to stay off these things and I was beginning to wonder if I had a problem. By Sunday morning I watch twitching to look again, absolutely convinced I’d missed out on something. 

“I think I’ve got a problem,” I confessed, “I’ve failed at staying off social media for longer than half an hour at a time. I need to go into rehab.”

A walk, would at least keep me occupied for a couple of hours. 

I did have a great time, added about 10 miles to the total and have contributed to the fundraising, so maybe I’m not such a failure even though I definitely failed to prepare.