Before the First Ladder

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town the thatching was done between the spring and the harvest, and the man who went up his ladders at seven had usually settled something at half past six.

Two thatchers in one town, the same reed cut from the same beds.
Both had sound ladders, good hazel spars and a boy to carry.
Both worked the same nine farms and the same row of cottages.
One of them did the worst thing on his list before he did anything else.
The other did it when he had a quiet minute, and a thatcher never has one.
By the harvest one of them was the better off. Which, and why?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two thatchers, in the town I have never named. Both bought reed from the same man on the levels. Watching them work, you could not have told which was which: the difference never showed on a roof.

It showed in three jobs that are not thatching at all. Money owed since the previous summer by the farmer up the lane. A cottage where the reed was failing because the rafter beneath it had gone soft, which meant stripping the whole slope and saying so to a householder who had asked for the cheap repair. And a slumped ridge on the third farm, to be gone back to and put right for nothing.

The first thatcher knew all three, and was neither idle nor a coward. He began each morning with the work in front of him, and kept the three jobs for a quiet hour the season never provided. The money came in the end, most of it, asked for in October, by which time the farmer had spent it on a heifer and barely remembered owing it, and settled at three quarters and a coolness that lasted two years. The ridge waited until August, by which time it had been described at market twice.

The cottage was the dear one. He patched the bad yard in April without saying what lay beneath it, meaning to raise it at a better moment. In November the ceiling stained, the householder went up with a candle, and a carpenter told her that nobody lays new reed over timber in that state. He was no longer the man who had found the trouble. He was the man who had covered it. He lost the cottage and the two others in the row that went with it.

The second thatcher kept a slate by the door, and at the bottom of it the one job he least wanted to do. He did it at half past six, on the step with his tea, before the boy came and before a ladder went up. Most days it took twenty minutes.

He wrote to the farmer in the week the money fell due, which is a different letter from the one you write in October and gets a different answer. He told the householder about the rafter in March, with the reed still on the cart, when the choices were three: strip it now, strip it in the autumn, or have the carpenter in first. She chose the carpenter, and paid a larger bill without a murmur because she had chosen it. The slumped ridge he put right in the first dry week, before anybody had mentioned it.

Both men thatched about the same roofs that year. One finished the harvest with his money in, his farms intact and a row of cottages that still sent for him.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

The job you are avoiding is the only job on your list that gets dearer while you leave it. Everything else there is patient. A shelf you have not built is the same shelf next week, at the same price. The avoided job is a different animal, and what makes it unpleasant is what makes it grow: somebody else is already standing in it.

Two of its costs are plain. A debt ages into a worse debt, since the money is spent at the other end and the asking gets harder every week you did not ask. And the trouble goes on working: a soft rafter does not wait for your convenient hour, it stains a ceiling, and now two people have a problem instead of one.

The third cost is the one nobody counts, and it is the largest. Delay spends your remedies. In March that cottage had three honest answers and two of them were cheap. By November it had one, it was dear, and it arrived with a dispute attached. Waiting does not keep your options open. It sells them off one at a time and pays you nothing.

Your part in the story alters as well. A fault you report is evidence that you are the sort of trade that finds faults, which is worth more than any claim about your own care. The same fault, found by somebody else after you have worked over the top of it, is evidence that you conceal things. Which of the two you were was decided by the date, and by nothing else.

Which is why the oldest thing on your list is so seldom the least important thing on it. Unimportant work falls off a list by itself. What survives at the bottom needs nerve rather than time, and nerve is a stock you hold most of at half past six and least of at six at night.

Two cautions. Not everything you are avoiding ought to be done, and reluctance is sometimes your judgement reporting for duty. Ask what exactly you are afraid of. If you can name it in a sentence it is dread, and the answer is twenty minutes tomorrow morning. If you cannot name it, it is doubt, and the answer is a think rather than a dash of courage, because the job may be one to refuse. The second caution is that this is one item and not an appetite.

Three questions, for the week in front of you:

1. What has been on my list longest, and what am I waiting for? If the answer is a better moment, you are not waiting, you are avoiding.
2. Which conversation am I having in my head instead of out loud? There is nearly always one: a price to raise, a fault to report, a sum to ask for. Count the days you have rehearsed it against the twenty minutes it needs.
3. What will this cost in six weeks that it does not cost today? Name the figure or the consequence, not the feeling. If delay truly costs nothing, leave it alone with a clear conscience.

The Answer to the Riddle

Two thatchers, the same reed and the same nine farms, and one did the worst thing on his list first while the other waited for a quiet minute. By the harvest one was the better off. Which, and why?

The second, and not because he was braver by nature. The three jobs he hated were the only three on his list that were growing. Done in March they were a letter, a kitchen conversation and a morning's work. Left until they announced themselves, they were three quarters of a debt and a lost row of cottages. He simply did the same work while it was still small.

The verse:

The shelf you never built is the same shelf in the spring,
But the word you never said has been at work the whole year long.
Say it while the saying is a sentence and a date,
For nothing on your list but that one grows while you are late.

Until next time. Go and spend twenty minutes, before you do anything else today, on the one job you keep moving down the list.

P.S. Keep a note for a month of what you dreaded and what it proved to be. The letter you could not face gets a civil reply, and the householder says she would rather know. It is usually a tenth of the shadow it cast, and you learn to discount the dread correctly.

Also in the archive: Sent Before Six, Nothing After the Sweeping and The Shutter at Seven.