Memo from in front of the telly.

So I spent this weekend holed up in a beautiful little cottage in the Lake District (Ambleside, to be precise), eating and drinking and watching the box with my fella.  Saturday night we ended up in front of Catfish - this documentary-style film following a guy called Nev, and his online relationship with a family who he's never met (a bit of a limp description I know, but whatever else I say will definitely ruin the film when you watch it).
There's some controversy over whether the action is real or fabricated, but either way the story was totally addictive, and had us speculating in every ad break as to how it might progress.  It's pretty easy to follow and generally the message of it seems quite obvious... until a particularly unassuming character comes up with this little anecdote out of the blue:

"They used to tank cod from Alaska all the way to China - they'd keep them in vats in the ship. By the time the codfish reached China, the flesh was mush and tasteless. So this guy came up with the idea that if you put these cods in these big vats, put some catfish in with them and the catfish will keep the cod agile... And there are those people who are catfish in life, and they keep you on your toes. They keep you guessing, they keep you thinking, they keep you fresh. And I thank god for the catfish because we would be droll, boring and dull if we didn't have somebody nipping at our fin."

Now, maybe out of context it really doesn't have as much meaning, but it's pretty much what drove me to write this memo.  Without the agitators, the people who challenge us, and push us to keep going and changing and working, we'd be... mush.



Okay, that's all the deep stuff done with.  I promise the next post won't be so wishy-washy... Or I will as long as you go and watch Catfish.