Be careful what you pray for, Pat.
Marching orders situation a tense thing all right.
Bill
On Wednesday, 9 March 2016, Patrick McManus <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> Hi Bill are you going to come to visit me??
> yes poem threw me back to when I actually had to give a visitor marching
> orders (to use a cliche :-))
> -----Original Message----- From: Bill Wootton
> Sent: Tuesday, March 8, 2016 9:40 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Visitors
>
> At what point does a visitor lose
> this status? When they leave, you
> imagine, or when they overstay.
>
> To visit is to spend time
> with payers of attention.
> When that attention strays,
>
> good visitors leave;
> other visitors move
> to the unwelcome category.
>
> The trick as a visitor is to
> leave the visitee wanting
> you to stay slightly longer.
>
> The trick as a visitee or host,
> to have visitors leave
> before they tell all.
>
> When visiting, you're
> on borrowed time. When
> you leave, you're back to you.
>
> When you host visitors,
> you're the you you hope
> you always are, plus some.
>
> Of course known visitors
> differ from unknown visitors.
> Your knowns may take liberties
>
> and you expect this. Unknowns
> can slip to knowns quite quickly
> or hover on visitorly outskirts.
>
> Without visitors, what would
> you have? A procession
> of bidden and unbidden family.
>
> Visits make the world go round.
> Places like Daylesford depend
> on visitors, temporary stayers.
>
> Countries like Australia roll out
> the welcome mat to certain
> classes of visitor.
>
> When your features or language
> identify you as different
> from your host,
>
> sometimes hard yards
> must be trodden. But the best
> of us treat visitors as guests.
>
> And settled guests are bound
> in their turn to accept their own
> visitors. It's called civilisation.
>
> bw
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