From Egypt to Altnaharra, the can-do spirit will always triumph

Jonathan Brocklebank

WE begin with some words of congratulation for the foremen on a couple of construction jobs.

Some time between 2580 and 2560 BC a team of Egyptian workers built what was to stand for the next 3,800 years as the world’s tallest manmade structure.

I cannot say much about the pay and conditions of those who heaved 2.3million stone blocks weighing many tons each from nearby quarries and formed them into a pyramid but the consensus is they were willing workers, not slaves.

I would go an educated guess further and suggest they were ‘can-do’ people.

Closer to home and possibly a few centuries longer ago, some others of the ‘can- do’ per s uasi on transported numerous 25-ton bluestones from the Preseli Mountains in Wales to a location 140 miles away in Wiltshire.

No one knows how they managed it or what was on their minds. But we can surmise that the architects of the stone circle which ensued were focused on the task in hand and had an appetite to complete it. History does not record anyone on the Stonehenge job telling their line manager they should call it a day at Weston-super-Mare.

Times have moved on and technology has arrived to make everything easier for us. And, accordingly, we have become ‘can’t-do’ people.

This week it emerged rising numbers of students at some of the UK’s top universities cannot hit essay deadlines or turn up for exams. Further, they feel the expectations of academia are too unreasonable.

Some of those appealing for clemency after receiving disappointing exam marks explained to university staff that they had overslept. Many more complained it was soooo unfair because tests stressed them out. One poor soul argued that he was too distracted to do the necessary work because he had to buy items for his unfurnished flat.

Useless

The dividing line between the success and failure of these overwrought demands from the snowflake population for the indulgence of their educators may seem vague and inconsistent but it is a crucial one nevertheless.

Ultimately, it could mean the difference between graduates being handsomely paid for telling their bosses why they can’t do something or else having to settle for a lot less money for being useless.

One does not have to manage one’s own affairs for very long before we encounter the familiar behaviourisms of this workforce. Many belong to the generation which laughed like drains as teenagers at the ‘Computer Says No’ sketches from TV’s Little Britain and now make their living slavishly reciting lines spoon-fed to them by their computers. I do not say the answer is always no – only that the computer decides what can and cannot be done, not the human backbone, not pluck.

What a delight, then, to discover a rich seam of ‘can-do’ spirit in a remote corner of Scotland this week. Blighted since the dawn of the internet age with abysmal connection speeds, the people of Altnaharra in Sutherland took matters in hand by rolling up their sleeves and digging more than three miles of trenches for fibre broadband cables.

Thanks to their own honest sweat a community of a few hundred people now enjoys some of the fastest broadband speeds in Scotland, transforming quality of life for many of them and dramatically improving business viability.

If you want a job done, I imagine they observed more than once during their dig, you do it yourself. I like to think they then whistled some.

No one suggests their achievement merits gasps of the order demanded by Stonehenge or the Great Pyramid of Giza but, in an age of thwarted ambition, where even the simplest of goals are entombed in excuses and infeasibility studies, isn’t there a quiet nobility in this no-nonsense pursuit of a finite end?

Certainly the nobility is a good deal quieter than the shrieks of wonder which greeted the completion – only a few months late, I won’t bore you with the excuses – of a bridge project across the Forth Estuary this year.

Nicola Sturgeon went so far as to call it the finest bridge in the world. A more fitting tribute may be that it is a fine bridge and, in the context of the ‘can’t-do’ time and place in which it was built, perhaps a cheering aberration.

Damned

Which brings me to the sofa which I am moving from a relative’s house in St Andrews to my own place, six floors up, in Glasgow this weekend. I have not sought the opinion of a removal firm on this because I already know the answer.

Their best man would take one look at the fire door at the top of the sixth flight and decide he was damned if he and his mates were lugging a killer three-seater all the way up there only to discover that it would not squeeze past the final obstacle.

He would give me the ‘can’tdo’ shake of the head and I would wonder ever after if that were common sense or negativity talking. Well, we are about to find out. Because, if you really want a job done, you do it yourself.

That’s what my head says anyway. As for the middleaged bones and muscles and sciatic nerves wheezing their protests, they’ll have to learn some positivity.