Once, being well-rounded was easy because you just had to know the rules of cricket, the poetry of Rudyard Kipling and some of the more obvious military tactics like running at the enemy firing guns or hiding behind a wall firing guns (the crucial factor being that the enemy is armed with pointy sticks).
Today, being well-rounded is much more difficult, its all about about balancing acts. The major difficulties are: work-play; work-family and business-personal relationships. Which just goes to show that if it wasn’t for work everything else would probably just slot into place.
One must achieve balance by finding an expertise in every area of the home. Become a gourmet in the kitchen, a wonderful parent in the living room, a sensitive lover in the bedroom, an erudite wit in the study, an appreciator of nature in the garden, and a creative DIYer all over the house and you might be some way to well-rounded. Of course, the boom in building luxury apartments for the young and dynamic makes this gargantuan task much more managable by offering just three rooms and 78 channels of TV so you can watch others be wonderful, sensitive, erudite gourmets with beautiful gardens and conceptual art built into the breakfast bar while you grunt between the microwave and the sofa.
Of course, you cannot let your body acquire any of the characteristics you demand for your whole being. The well-rounded individual should be slim and sporty, with the well-toned muscles, perfect skin and robust tan that can best be achieved with an obsessive focus on diet and exercise. Second best seems to be a combination of the Atkins diet and a hot grilling under the sunbed so that you begin to resemble that nostalgic corn snack, the frazzle.
(Apologies to Guy Browning)
