I’m 47 years old. Two days ago, you sent me an email, which I did not answer. I didn’t answer it, in part, because I am 47 years old.
I appreciated your email. You are a person, who has written an email, and I am a person, who should reply to that email. However, your email arrived on Wednesday afternoon, and just as I opened it, my 16-year-old son came in. He wanted to describe to me an app he is in the process of developing. Then he showed me a funny article someone had sent him, and I showed him a funny article someone had sent me, and then I explained that I had work to do, that I needed, in fact, to respond to your email, and also to write 3,000 words in the next 36 hours. “I’ve only written 300,” I said.
“Not quite the thing” is what Bertie Wooster used to tell Jeeves he was feeling when he was feeling poorly. As a general matter, Bertie was hungover, but the phrase also encompassed a few other typical Bertie states of mind, including vaguely heartbroken and actually ill and snuffly or just taken to his bed in an attempt to avoid one of his many aunts. The past two weeks have found me taking to my bed and clutching the saddest possible […]
