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Today's quote:

Thursday, October 16, 2025

"Les clous!"

 

 

Erik Durschmied's book "The Hinge Factor" describes a moment when a French officer at the Battle of Waterloo shouted "Les clous!" ("Nails!"), urging his men to spike the allied cannons by driving nails into their touchholes. But not a single French rider had nails with which to spike the firing holes, and render the English artillery useless.

And so, on 18 June 1815, for want of a nail a whole battle was lost. And so it also happens in our personal battles in life when a small incident or a moment of sheer stupidity may change the course of our lives forever.

In my case, it was not the lack but use of them when, in a moment of unhinged stupidity, I drove another nail into my coffin in 1982 after I had returned from New Guinea and finding my house in Queensland still tenanted. Instead of waiting a few more weeks for the tenants to move out, I impatiently dashed off on another overseas contract with irreversible and quite catastrophic consequences to my personal life.

Or when, in another unhinged moment of stupidity, I resigned from my last perfect overseas assignment to go back to the same town I had so impatiently left only three years earlier. With enough money to see me through as many months as it would take to find another job, I instead impatiently dashed off to Sydney, until eventually I dug myself a hole in Canberra so deep that I could no longer hope to dig myself out of it. And, having become such an expert at digging myself into deep holes, I seem to have dug myself one last and even deeper one at "Riverbend".

Perhaps it's time to reflect on the many chances and stupidities that changed my life as I read Erik Durschmied's interesting book "The Hinge Factor". "Les clous?" I need them like I need another hole in my head!

 


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