SIXES AND SEVENS

I'm at sixes and sevens.

It's an odd phrase isn't it? I looked it up, to find that no-one seems totally sure about where it comes from. Chaucer used 'set on six and seven' as a sort of metaphor for risking your whole life on two dice in an epic gamble.^[1]

But then, there's a story of two London Livery companies disputing which order they are in the Order of Preference of the Livery Companies, and so fighting (for hundreds of years) over sixth and seventh place every Easter.^[2]

What I mean though, is that I'm not sure where I am - a little disoriented and uncertain.

I've been this way all morning - having arrived with a plan, and then having been pulled into meetings. That is a sure way to end up at sixes and sevens - lots of consecutive, confusing meetings.

Hmm. 'Pulled in' - another interesting phrase. It's business jargon I suppose, for someone poking their head around a door and saying something like "Matt, would you mind joining us for a moment?" rather than grabbing your jumper and dragging you through the door - although some would argue the end result is the same. You'd think wouldn't you that that kind of thing only happens to important people who are able to step in and make decisions? Not so.

But weirdly, that isn't what I mean either. What actually happened was that I had forgotten about the first meeting, and had to catch up with what was going on while I chewed my porridge in the meeting room.

Then, there was no time to prepare for the next one, so I sat through that looking clueless, blank, glum... blum, glank.... blueless, whichever the least horrible portmanteau version you prefer. Either way, I was 'at sixes, and at sevens', bluffing my way through those meetings like a sort of dishevelled, grumpy academic who's just been dusted off and 'pulled in' in the middle of a whacky science experiment. But with very little idea of what's going on. And a bowl of porridge.

Then it was lunchtime and I had neck ache from the breathtaking speed at which my head had been rotating between spoon, notebook and projector.

I think both Chaucer's risky gamble, and the Livery guild battles, embody the idea of 'sixes and sevens' - emerging together to form the messy idea of it being both recklessly confused, and yet clumsily disconnected from the normal smoothness of an organised life as though your very emotions are jostling for position.

I need a bit of order - in both senses of the word. It's risky living at sixes and sevens.



[1]. https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/sixes-and-sevens.html

[2]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worshipful_Company_of_Merchant_Taylors