Thing To Do Today: be jolted.

Along the cool sequestered vale of life

They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

 

Those lines are from Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.

 

Living in a cool vale and keeping a noiseless tenor of our way sound rather nice.

 

But...

 

Oh, come on you lot, seize the day. Take - or at least notice - the untrod path. Go on, risk giving yourself a bit of a jolt.

 

Photo by Mark Coldren

 

Read a copy of that dreadful newspaper.

 

Try the jellied eels.

 

Go to see the film.

 

Choose a random number under a thousand and then read a book from your library with that Dewey Decimal number** (if your country doesn't use Dewey Decimal numbers then you can find a key to the sections HERE. But choose your number first.)

 

Let's face it, who really wants to live in a cool vale? It's way too much like a rut.

 

Thing To Do Today: be jolted. The word jolt was first used in the 1500s and is probably a blend of the dialect words jot, to jerk, and joll, to jump.

 

 *Yes, it's noiseless tenor, not even tenor, despite what everybody says.

**The germ of this idea came from a programme on BBC Radio 4 featuring Brian Eno.