GOLD GYPSY pt2
Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional, I’m not saying that we have to be childish but we do need to be more child like; to have that spirit of adventure, Swallow and Amazons, Tom Sawyer and Huckle Berry Finn, to have that get up and go; Most of our get up and go has got up and went long ago without our realising it, and we get caught on that treadmill we call life. If it is life it wouldn’t be a treadmill, a chore. A treadmill is being caught in a cleft stick, caught between a rock and a hard place. Life is waking up every morning feeling really joyous, with an expectation of grabbing the horns of life head on and wrestling the day into submission. Some have called us brave, courageous, steadfast adventurers. Some have called us nuts. But today's mighty oak is just yesterday's nut that held its ground.
In the past and just recently I have been described as a pirate, not that I wear a bandana, an eye patch carry a cutlass and go around saying ooo arrgh me hearties, far from it. I am not a lover of the briny as it changes my palour, I wear an African bush hat, wear specs and feel I have a better command of the English language than the average sons of Davey Jones.
The thing with proclaiming to be a pirate is that any officer of the law is still allowed to put a warning shot across my bows for my surrender. The modern day pirate would be quite unrecognisable from the captain Jack Sparrow stereo type. Ok we wouldn’t look much like a city banker, but we certainly wouldn’t look like captain Hook either, most would look like the average person you would pass in the streets. We don’t lure ships and boats to their doom anymore. But we do try to live of the land and the streams with the minimum of disturbance not only to the environment but to the general public as well. Most folk wouldn’t know that we’ve been wherever we’ve been except for the landowner who has given us permission to be were we where.
The purpose behind stealth and secrecy, being almost furtive is we don’t wont every Tom Dick and Harry coming over to us and saying ‘ere mate what you doing. Its not that we are unsociable creatures far from it, you ought to see us when we occasionally have an impromptu meet.
We tend to be loners and have a single focused concentration on our task at hand, and with every interruption comes a break in our concentration and a re focussing on our subject matter after polite conversation. This causes a loss of time we have set aside for our chosen foray and a loss of time means a loss of finds and ultimately a loss of cash at the end of the day. That then requires a period of forced overtime to make up time, finds and our required daily cash amount. When you work for someone else you get paid an hourly rate regardless of how many interruptions you may have. Us gold gypsies still have to put fuel in the vehicles, food on the tables and bills to be paid and a certain amount of monies need to be won daily to meet that criteria. Time lost is never recovered so make the most of all of your available time on your chosen subject.
“If you keep doing what you’ve always been doing-you will keep getting what you’ve always been getting. And to change what you’ve been getting you have to change what you’ve been doing”.
