He used the examples of “pearls before swine” and “pardon my French” to back up his argument. I would add “put your money where your mouth is” as yet another such phrase that you hardly ever hear these days. In fact today it seems fashionable to do exactly the opposite. A plethora of the so called “great and the good” consisting of Hollywood actors, various celebrities, religious leaders, politicians, royals and others are falling over themselves to line up and tell the "little people" how they should live their lives, how they should think and how they should conduct themselves in every circumstance while simultaneously doing exactly the opposite themselves. The hypocrisy is utterly astonishing and also insulting as it implies that these so called elites think that the people they are lecturing are too stupid to see what is going on and that they are somehow inferior to them, ignorant plebs that, as they see it, need to be guided into the light and towards a much more virtuous way of life, while they themselves carry on leading a highly extravagant over privileged existence.
If you want to take people with you, you need to lead by example (another outdated phrase). Hence the brave captains in the First World War who lead their men out of the trenches and over the top into the jaws of hell, despite knowing they would all face a certain death. Meanwhile the generals hid behind the lines in the safety of palaces and other grand buildings smoking cigars and drinking whisky while issuing chaotic, ill-advised and impossible to achieve orders, which condemned men far braver than them to their deaths. From this we have yet another old saying “lions lead by donkeys”.
A couple of my recent blogs focused on adopting and/or sponsoring rescue dogs and offering advice and encouragement for people to go down this route instead of buying a puppy. Many of you may have noticed posts on Facebook about Claude. Claude is a basset hound cross who like Harry was found on the streets of Lefkosa, Northern Cyprus nearly a year ago. Like Harry he also has deformed front legs and his head is strikingly like Harry’s with the same facial expressions, which makes me think they must be related in some way. I have been sponsoring him for some time now, while working on being able to get him home to the UK to live with me. He was rescued by the same charity that helped Harry and he has been staying at my friend Suzan’s kennels.
Claude is very nervous and any noise or a stranger will startle him and make him run away. He is scared to come indoors and he frequently carries his tail clamped down between his back legs and looks anxiously around him trying to make sense of this frightening world. When I first went to visit him last summer at Suzan’s kennels he ran away from me barking and it took quite a lot of time before he plucked up the courage to allow me to sit next to him and stroke him.
I was very surprised when on my visit 6 months later he seemed much more relaxed and happy to come up to me straight away for a fuss. Suzan thought it was because he remembered me despite only having seen me a couple of times before. I brought him a warm waterproof coat to wear and a comfy cozy duvet to line his bed. He is currently staying with me in Cyprus learning what it is like to be inside a house, warm and safe with plenty of food and lots of love.