Thing To Do Today: straggle.

There are people with discipline and purpose - and then there are the stragglers.

The people with discipline and purpose will travel together in a neat and tidy manner. None of them will get lost, and they will arrive in just as neat a formation as that in which they started.

Sometimes this is a good and necessary thing:

By Diliff - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40983834 Band of the Welsh Guards, London.

and sometimes it's the only safe way to proceed:


schoolchildren in TamilNadu. Photo by Saravankm

but I wonder...

Those stragglers, the ones who dawdle and get left behind. They may end up in unplanned places, and they may have unplanned encounters; and they certainly make it difficult for those in authority.

On the other hand, those in authority may have rather boring and unprofitable plans.

And who, after all, knows what wonders may be discovered round the next accidental corner?

Thing To Do Today: straggle. This word appeared in the 1300s, but no one is sure from where it came. It may be something to do with the word stretch.

I have written in praise of straggling, but I must note that with hair it's different. That's a pain.