Personal Mission Statement

We were sitting in the Drymen Pottery today having lunch, when the owner walked through wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the words: YOUR VILLAGE CALLED...THEIR IDIOT IS MISSING. And at that moment I realised what my personal mission statement should be.

As we were driving up to Glasgow last week, Jo suggested that we ought to come up with a more personalised family mission statement ahead of our sabbatical (and possible move to) Perth. "Idiot in search of a village" would seem to sum my situation up pretty sucinctly. Indeed, it has precedent: back when I was a postgrad, I found myself waiting for the lift with my Old Testament professor and a visiting professor there to cunduct a PhD viva together, only to be introduced by Philip to his guest as, "This is Andrew Dowsett. He's the village idiot." To this day, I choose to believe that it was meant as a compliment (one village idiot acknowledging another). Later, on the staff team at St Tom's, my then-team-leader described me, similarly, as the clown - the jack-of-all-trades brought on by the ring-master to save the day when all else goes wrong...

So there it is. I am an idiot in search of a village with a vacancy in the position. An itinerant idiot, so to speak. And Jo's mission statement? Back at the Pottery today, she suggested, "Pity Me!" Don't believe her for one moment.