viernes, 29 de abril de 2011

The Preacher's bad luck


Mr. Boggis was very excited. He almost kept calm, but when he saw his station-wagon he began to run.  The Boggis Commode is yours! He started his car and drove directly to the house of Rummins.
            When Mr. Boggis arrived at the back of the farmhouse, he made the three men out doing something with a saw; the three men turned towards him. "Okay I'm here. Are you ready to put the Commode in my car? The men were sweaty and covered of wooden dust and beside their feet there were mahogany wooden pieces. The men smiled at him and Rummins got closer "We made the work for you" he said and smile like a frog. "I don't understand what you are saying. Did you take out the Commode?"  Mr. Boggis answered back. "Yes, we did. But Claud had another idea; as you only wanted the legs, therefore we decided to saw them off."
            Mr. Boggis turned pale. The Boggis Commode without legs! My dear God! How could this be possible? All his dreams about fame and glory, all the interviews and newspapers with his photograph, the faces of the boys in London, the offers from the fellows and all the bubbles that were rising up in his stomach a minutes ago, suddenly had disappeared. Instead of bubbles, his stomach was full of stones, heavy stones.
             There must be a way to fix it, he thought, something with I could join the legs to the rest of the Commode, something like glue? No, everybody would realize the marks of the saw. Mr. Boggis bent down, his cassock drag over the wooden dust, and picked up one of the legs, "I can't do anything with this" he cried. These three idiots have a unique, rare piece of furniture and they painted and then cut the legs off!
            "Where the rest is?" he wanted to know. It was Bert who answered this time, "When we cut the legs, we think that this enormous thing wouldn't fit inside your car, so we cut it into pieces" Mr. Boggis gave a shout of fright and he fall down.
             When he woke up he saw three faces looking at him and saying something that he couldn't understand. "What happened?" he asked. "You fainted. Do you feel okay" said someone; he didn't know to whom belonged the voice. "Where is the Commode? I came here to take it" He sat down and remembered what had happened, that Rummins and the others had cut the Boggis Commode.
            What people would say about him? He found the fourth Chippendale Commode, which was lost so many years and looked for many others, and then three idiotic farmers destroy it. Mr. Boggis felt dismay because in his nine years since he invented the Society for the Preservation of Rare Furniture and began to gather the pieces of furniture, none of the owners of that furniture had destroyed it. Everybody had understood that the Society for Preservation was for that, to preserve the furniture not to destroy them. "I hope nobody finds out what has happened, because it will be my end in this business. I will be the joke for years" he wished while he smelled the recently cut mahogany.
            "Do you want the legs, right? If you don't, you have to pay me equally" Rummins claimed, "you promised to pay me twenty pounds and I want my twenty!" Bert and Claud were standing beside Rummins looking at him threateningly. "Calm down gentlemen!" advocated the dealer "I said that I want the legs for my table so... here is the money" he passed the twenty pound to Rummins.
            "If you want, come in and have something to eat, you look sick" invited Bert, "I would like to drink something very strong, In fact, you're right I don't feel so good, something has affected me". Mr. Boggis accepted the invitation.        All the effort that he made to convince Rummins of selling him the piece of furniture was in vain and he felt disappointed of that, I have to improve the form in that I convince my clients, and never repeat that I only need the legs, he thought while he followed Bert inside the house.
             At the end there was nothing he could do just only forget what happened and wait a while because he had to come back to the other house where he saw a beautiful semi-circular table may be the owners could have returned of the church.
            "Don't you have something else that could interest me, Mr. Rummins?"
           

viernes, 1 de abril de 2011

The balance between personal life and work

People have different ways to manage their life and most of cases it depends of various aspects; as individuals we are defined for a lot of things, some less important than others like a comment that we hear when we walking on the street, the artist in fashion or whatever other unimportant thing; another are more or less important, like a the time in which corresponds us to live or the city where we live But, there are also, other aspects which are so important that they mark us and they influence along our entire life; our friends, the decisions that we made and  our family. I think, and actually I am very sure of that, is the most important aspect.
Our family (mother, father and brothers) forms our personality and gives us all the tools, be values or principles, to develop as a complete human being and also, to unwrap us in the society.  We share with our family our thoughts, wishes, longings, decisions, etc., and when we have to choose careers or decided what to do with our life, parents always be there, supporting us or making us think when they are clearly sure we are going in the wrong way. In "The Jack Randa Hotel" story, the principal character, Gail, was alone because she cut herself off from family (or as she said her family cut her off), when she was young, so I believe if she had had her family beside her, supporting or directing what she was doing, maybe she wouldn't have left everything to wander about  the world with either friends or boyfriends, wouldn't have been pregnant and then lost the baby; maybe,  she would have had a different life, adolescent's normal life.
At the time when we start to work, to pay the university or just to have some money, the family and sometimes, friends, advised us to choose well or to motivate us when we are depressed or when we are started something new. It is important to reach a good balance between the personal life and the work, because both are fundamental things in the life of people; when some of these aspects stand out or taking more importance that the other one, the decisions that we take cannot be very good, for example on the one hand, if we work much time or if we get stressed for a work's problem, or even when we are unemployed, our personal life is affected, mainly it is affected the relationship that we have with those that surround us. On the one hand, when our personal problems affected us (for example, when we broke up with a boyfriend or have an argument with a relative or friend), our acting in the work is bad and disappointed.
Gail, was precipitated when she sold her shop and decided to follow Will to Australia; her personal life was more important that her job (she was her own boss!) and she didn´t care about what she would do once she returned from Australia, as if the future won`t exist.
I believe it is impossible to separate two important aspects of our life (personal life and work), but is possible to act and order the things in such way that everything will be in their right place.