Mnemonics Rule

When just a small boy, my rosy cheeked old grandmother took me on her knee and gave me two rules for life which I have never forgotten. “Never back odds-on favourites” she said, and “never run up stairs”. I have followed these precepts, man and boy, all my life and they have never let me down.

We are given a lot of advice as we wander along life’s path, yawning and tripping over things, and it is some of that advice that I would like to share with you now.

And to share with you, not just advice, but to remind you of some of life’s useful mnemonics (and isn’t ‘mnemonic’ a word that we would all like to weave into a sentence at least once in a lifetime).

At school we were advised to place ‘I before E, except after C’. This is one of the diciest mnemonics around. Atheists, scientists, and citizens of most ancient societies, in their haciendas, all wisely ignore it.

During time spent in the Air Force, a valiant attempt was made to teach me how to navigate using a map and compass, which really taught me different ways of getting lost.

Part of the lesson was to learn a mnemonic which was, or possibly was, ‘magnetic east, variation least; magnetic west, variation best’. The attraction of this mnemonic lies partly in its Zen-Buddhist like simplicity, and partly because, like most Zen precepts, no-one has any idea what it means. Even so, I encourage readers to commit it to memory and call on it whenever they feel the need.

As a young newspaper photographer, in the days of the fierce rivalry between photographers from the old ‘Sun’ and ‘Mirror’ newspapers, a weather-beaten photographer, not so much rosy cheeked as rosy nosed, advised me that, to beat the competition, I should ‘come early and stand close’. Wise advice, which can be used in many situations, Essendon/Collingwood matches and your own wedding to name but two.

Recently, while a passenger on a porous scow on the Clyde River, I was advised by the vessel’s master, if I can honour him with such a title, that “when at sea another ship is seen, pass red to red, not green to green.” At the time the only other ships to be seen were a homemade canoe paddled by a pyknic tyre-fitter, and a partially inflated plastic whale bearing two small boys. Or perhaps a partially inflated small boy bearing two whales - my memory fails me regarding the details.

At the time the advice was of little use to me. But it is a mnemonic worth remembering if you should find yourself in charge of a cruise ship or super-tanker in the next few days.

Giving advice is all very well, but what happens then? Everyone gives it, but no-one takes it. Somewhere, there must be a warehouse full of unused advice in as-new condition. What a boon it would be if that good advice could be made available to the world, at a knock-down price, so that we could all learn from it and prosper.

T.R.

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Ever noticed…?

 That happiness is a choice…
That it takes both rain and sunshine to make a rainbow…
That sometimes, the greatest risk is not taking one…
That the best things in life aren’t ‘things’…
That everyone smiles in the same language…
That kindness is a Boomerang