Help in time of trouble… help the poor… Or as the poet wrote, “Be kind to little animals/ wherever you may be/ And give a stranded jellyfish/ a shove into the sea!”
Yes, so far so good, but help is a double-edged sword. The person who helps you to sort your laundry may have the best intentions, but the result is that you still can’t find your vest and pants for weeks; the guest who helps you put out the rubbish can include the rubbish you’ve just written.
Help is of various kinds. There’s a splendid strip cartoon of a man stuck halfway up a cliff saying, “Lassie get help”, which sounds sensible – but is followed by a moving picture of the dog Lassie sitting in a counsellor’s chair.
If I am sounding a bit sour, it is because a friend – well, two friends actually – in an airport ignored the fact that I’d got easily from home to Gatwick Airport and then to Italy all by myself – well as easily as anything involving a taxi, a train and a vast airport is likely to be – to then make me get into a wheelchair to be put through all the various controls.
Ah well, the richness of our language is such that a single word can mean so many different things; but some of them can cover tiresome surprises when someone actually decides to put them into action.
I may be drolling along pointlessly here, but there it is – I can’t help it.
What do you think? Have your say below
