Hard work and how

Jenny and I agree that as we get older we have a much greater appreciation of other people's achievements, of the hard work and determination that made those achievements possible.

When I was young I would be aware that a top novelist or lawyer or sportsperson or art restorer had done something special, but I wouldn't be aware of the full extent of what lay behind it and what it took to achieve it.

I never realised what the top novelist had to go through to produce the novel that I casually summed up as impressive or exciting. I imagined that they just sat down, scribbled away for a few weeks, and hey presto a brilliant novel.

I never thought about how hard it was to come up with an unusual and convincing plot, or vivid characters, or a dramatic ending. Or how hard it was to write fluent, smooth-flowing prose for hundreds of pages. Or how hard it was to keep at it day after day without being distracted. Or how hard it was to get your first novel published after dozens of rejections.

The sheer persistence and self-confidence required is easily underestimated. So many people say they're going to write a novel, but they never do.

The same applies to anyone who's done something spectacular or sensational. More and more I appreciate the hinterland of sheer hard work and application and single-mindedness that made that thing possible.

I was thinking all this I watched some of the astonishing Olympics coverage, and I was very conscious of the years and years of training and tenacity that underlie those stunning feats. Utterly mind-boggling.

Crossed fingers

A lot of people are adamant they achieve things through their own efforts. Luck has nothing to do with it, they say. It's all hard work, determination and shrewdness.

I think they're kidding themselves. Yes, a bit of hard graft is needed. But so many things are down to luck. Being in the right place at the right time. Knowing the right people. Being first in the queue. Hearing something on the grapevine. There are plenty of people who work their asses off with nothing much to show for it.

I know how much luck I've had in my own life. So many things that could have gone horribly pear-shaped worked out surprisingly well. I benefited from the years of prosperity that were followed by recession and shrinking opportunities. Quite by chance I picked up skills that have come in useful ever since.

Other people have even greater luck. They inherit huge sums of money. They win the lottery. They're born to well-connected and multi-talented parents, or turn out to be prodigiously talented themselves. They happen to invent something that becomes a universal must-have.

Knowing as I do how much of my life has depended on good luck, I'm always a bit nervous about the future. Will this astonishing run of luck continue or will it abruptly hit the buffers? Will I suddenly find myself in dire straits, the rug pulled from underneath me? All I can do is cross my fingers, hope for the best and keep on truckin'.

So what will the future bring? Windfalls or pitfalls? Thrills or bills? Trick or treat?

Hard work

It's a well-worn cliché that only hard work will get you what you want in life. But it's also a load of bollocks. Hard work might get results, or it might get you precisely nothing.

There are plenty of people out there sweating away day after day with little to show for it. All the money's going to their bosses or their landlord or their season ticket and they struggle to make any real improvements in their life.

Other people lie on their yachts all day and do nothing but watch the money pour in from their various investments and property empires. Their only hard work is tying their shoelaces.

I must admit I've done very little hard work in my life. I've been lucky enough to have fairly leisurely jobs with plenty of time for chatting and fooling around. The only serious exertion was the start of the academic year at a university bookshop, humping hundreds of weighty textbooks into the shop and trying to keep up with the deluge of impatient students and their voluminous booklists (that was in the pre-internet, pre-Wikipedia days of course). It was pure bedlam.

What wealth and comfort I've acquired has been almost entirely through luck rather than hard work. Constantly rising property prices, especially in London, and an unexpected windfall from my mum. Or to put it another way, being in the right place at the right time and knowing the right people.

I suppose you could also say I haven't squandered all my money on drink or drugs or gambling or hookers. If you have any kind of expensive addiction, then any amount of hard work, however well it's paid, won't bear much fruit.

I was reading only today that the average income for a writer is now about £11,000 a year. You can sit in front of your pc for decades, laboriously cranking out page after page of hard-won creativity, and have only a massive overdraft as your reward.

Listening to all these millionaire government ministers urging us all to solve our problems by working a bit harder is pretty sickening. I'd like to see them scrubbing a few floors on their hands and knees. That'll be the day.

Slobs and go-getters

Are we naturally lazy or naturally hard-working? Are human beings designed to slob around all day doing nothing useful or to get stuck into something and enjoy a sense of achievement?

Some people are happy to live lives of total indolence, slumped on the settee with a six-pack watching crap movies, while others are working all hours running a business or cleaning their homes from top to bottom.

So who's normal and who's peculiar? Or is it just individual temperament? Or the way we've been brought up?

It's partly what we see as important, and what makes us feel secure and comfortable. If the sight of dust and grime and sagging curtains makes us feel ashamed or inadequate, we'll rush around hoovering and wiping and repairing. If an office intray full of weeks-old memos makes us feel pathetic or disorganised, we'll spring into life and deal with them.

If such feelings never bother you, you can sprawl around all day in a state of untroubled serenity.

Status sneaks in as well. Someone who's acutely status-conscious, obsessed with how their life compares with neighbours or workmates, will be frantically plotting to earn more, have a flashier home or be more glamorously dressed. So they'll put in the hard graft to get what they lack and keep up with the Joneses.

Those who're indifferent to status even if their home is a crumbling tip next to a spotless mansion, won't lift a finger.

And don't forget ambition. Some people simply want to be the best at something, to set themselves high standards, while others muddle along doing the minimum they can get away with.

I have to admit my own fits of hard work are due more to a guilty conscience than any natural urge for strenuous labour. I've never been hung-up on status. And I've never been ambitious. Listening to Lissie Maurus in a pleasant alcoholic haze will do me fine.