Finding the Bloody Dot — Why We Need Tim in the World

I met Tim through the Public Service Association.

We did not, it is fair to say, arrive at every question from precisely the same philosophical postcode, or even district, city or country - at times.

Tim was somewhere just to the left of Karl Marx. I was probably somewhere considerably further down the road arguing about execution, outcomes and whether we really needed another committee or meeting to talk about Mr Marx.

Yet Tim is also one of those people you simply cannot help but like.

A deeply decent humanist, fiercely principled, thoughtful, funny, and an all-round very good bloke.

He also possesses a quite extraordinary professional gift.

You could present Tim with a vast, beautifully painted masterpiece of work — magnificent composition, perfect light (forged in the dark), exquisite detail — and he could be relied upon to stand quietly in front of it for several minutes before eventually pointing to a microscopic dot in the bottom-left corner and saying -

“Have we thought about that?”

I generally couldn’t see the dot.

But I (or we) needed to see the dot — or dots.

That was among Tim’s many gifts. Not finding imperfection for the sake of it, but caring enough about the work, its seriousness and its real impact, the people it affected, its execution and the outcome to keep looking until the things the rest of us had missed became visible and dealt with.

Sometimes I wasn’t entirely convinced there was a dot. Tim, naturally, knew there was and he was relied on to find said dots. He could even see it or them when the lights when off and he was still there working fixing the ruddy dots.

And the utterly annoying thing was that, often enough, he was right (especially when I felt he was so utterly wrong) and it was often so important he find them (not always on the Marx stuff though).

This became something of a competitive sport.

I’d get into work at some completely unreasonable hour — often around 4am — partly in the hope of finally getting sufficiently far ahead, get that delivery pipe flowing so well that Tim couldn’t possibly find the next bloody dot among a torrent of masterpieces.

The sod would turn up not long afterwards or actually was sitting there before I arrived. And... find one. Every. Single. Time. I’m still not entirely convinced he ever went home.

The world needs people like that. People who care enough to look properly. People who challenge. People who notice. People who actually give a damn. Tim gave a damm and with good reason.

It breaks me to say, my mucka Tim is now facing incurable pancreatic cancer. He and his family need our help. We need Tim in this world.

Whatever our occasional differences in worldview, on this there is absolutely no disagreement -

We need Tim in the world for as long as humanly possible.

First and overwhelmingly for his wife and three children. Then because he is a genuinely good man. The very best. No question. Tim is the Masterpiece.

And, somewhat selfishly, because somewhere out there is a perfectly good painting of work currently being admired by everyone else — and none of us have yet found the bloody all important dot.

Tim will.

If you can spare something, please help give him more time to keep finding them.

❤️

Help Tim get life-extending treatment - https://givealittle.co.nz/cause/help-tim-get-life-extending-treatment