Monday, January 23, 2023
Perfectionism
Ronald Blythe, Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village (New York: Pantheon, 1969), p. 68 (the Rev. Gethyn Owen speaking):
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I have sometimes dared to question the incredible perfection attached to certain tasks—this is heresy, if you like! Take ploughing or ricking, why should these jobs have had such a tremendous finesse attached to them? The harvest would not have been the less if the furrows wavered a little. But, of course, a straight furrow was all that a man was left with. It was his signature, not only on the field but on life. Yet it seems wrong to me that a man's achievement should be reduced to this. It was a form of bondage if he did but know it. Their wives had their part to play in this; a woman was admired if she scrubbed and polished until she dropped. In my father's Welsh parish it was the doorsteps.
