I tend, much like Mycroft Holmes, to pretty much run on rails. Apart from the rare and very odd deviation from my routine, I can usually be found in one of three places, and if I’m not in any of those, I’m either somewhere restocking one or other of them, or I’m travelling between them. It’s a small world, it’s a safe world, it’s a world I understand and it’s one that makes some kind of sense to me. Venturing beyond its very definite boundaries rarely sits all that well with me, and I tend to treat such expeditions with a certain amount of fear and loathing, even though, usually it all turns out fine in the end.
It was for the very reason of the predictability of my whereabouts that I struggled for many years with the vexing issue of mob-illy teffalones and whether I actually needed one. I reasoned quite reasonably that I was so rarely anywhere else that if anyone needed to get in touch with me there were three places they could track me down and leave a message and maybe have to wait for me to get back to them. Shock! Horror! Or that if I was anywhere else it was reasonable (there’s that word again...) to assume that I was either on my way there and probably driving anyway and therefore unable to take their call, or perhaps in some kind of a social situation where a telephone conversation might seem inappropriate.
I know, I know... it’s an old-fashioned view that there might just be times when the people you’re actually with might seem more interesting than those who ring you up whilst you’re out, or that you might just have to wait to have a conversation with someone, but there you go. The big scary world of my youth was a simpler scary place, but we survived.
Anyway, it was all academic anyway. The phone pretty much stopped ringing and I faded into relative social obscurity. Perhaps that’s the real fear of all those people I still see with their ears clamped to the little boxes that rule their lives, that they will somehow fall off the grid if they’re not constantly reminding other people that they’re there...?
Such a position became even more irrelevant when I found that I had to have one of those terrible little boxes for work, but I can say with some satisfaction that the discovery that I can actually choose to switch the thing off when I’m on my own time has gone some way towards keeping the big scary world at bay.
I have always struggled with the unknown and the uncontrollable, where factors beyond my control can cause situations I am in to get out of hand. This is why when I enjoy, say, an evening in a particular restaurant, it is more likely that I shall return to that same place at some future date rather than more adventurously venturing further afield. Once I know how a place works, I am more comfortable with it and likely to feel more confident that the next time it will be a known quantity and I am less likely to be afraid that I will commit some massive gaffe, walk through the wrong door, or do something that doesn’t sit well with the routine of the place, and have to live with all the social embarrassments and breaches of etiquette that this entails.
Otherwise, there are so many questions: What’s the ordering system? Do they come to you or do you have to go to the counter? Where are the toilets? Are the gratuities included? An entire cascade of possibilities and problems that need to be allowed for, calculated, and controlled in order to be able to enjoy a relaxing evening with a glass of mulled Vimto and a Pork Pie.
No wonder I don’t go out much any more. It’s all far too scary...
“So, how do I cope with holidays then?”, I don’t hear you ask... Well, it’s quite easy really. I have a total cultural meltdown and remain twitchy for about 24 hours and then I sort of “adapt” in a “rabbit caught in the headlamps” kind of a way. It took me about a week to “go native” the last time I was in France, and even America with its familiar cultural landmarks and (almost) common language can find me feeling out of my depth and in need of a bit of a hug. Egypt, however, did seem like it was going to be a culture clash too far for someone like me who blends in in much the way that Dr Marcus Brody had to that time, but in the end, apart from a few tricky moments, we were safely placed within the protection of the tourism “bubble” and had a lovely, if constantly wary old time of it.
I’m actually rather fond of the “bubble”. It’s served me rather well over the years in coping with the big scary world now that I’ve adapted it for domestic purposes. Sometimes it does make you seem perhaps a little “stand-offish”, but I find that it’s a small price to pay for the relative security and protection it provides me with.
Outside of it, there is a big, scary, unknown and unknowable place, the bigger, wider world. You know it well, I’m sure. It is, after all where you all live, but to me it can seem, quite frankly, terrifying. Every time I switch on the TV these days, which is, after all, my own little “window on the world” I am reminded what a big scary world that there is out there, and occasionally, because that’s the nature of “telly”, what a wonderful place it can also seem to be, too. It leads, of course, to a rather “bipolar” relationship with the world which means that my desire to interact with it, or not, can turn on a sixpence, which you may very well have noticed if you are a regular reader of this gibberish. What is a rather emphatic position today can be more enigmatic tomorrow. Like with many things, any actual opinion may remain an enigma, wrapped in a conundrum and folded into a souffle of mystery, but then that’s precisely the nature of the big scary world in my head.
Or perhaps I’m just fickle...
One thing that the TV does very well, of course, is to remind me that my own little troubles really don’t add up to much in the great scheme of things and I should, perhaps, just shut the hell up about my tiny little troubles, when the peoples of the world are blowing each other up in the name of progress, although venturing out does seem less likely when our own lords and masters are carping on about such things as “The scandal of public drunkenness” as if it’s a new thing.
Has he never seen a Hogarth print?
Come to think of it, there’s a fair chance he owns a few...
Of course it all does come down to my own fear and cowardice, I would never try to deny it. It’s just the way that I’ve been put together, and I’ve (sort of) got used to it over the years. It doesn’t make life any simpler, though. Still, travel can broaden the mind, they say, and I am actually on the very brink of venturing out into that big wide and scary old world for a couple of weeks fairly soon, so, when I have done that I might be a much more mellow person for a while until it all wears off, so, when I’ve been and gone and done that (it is still a while off yet), I’ll see you on the other side, I hope, and no doubt want to tell you all about it then.
Oh great, they shuddered. Yet another idiot boring us to tears with his holiday snaps...
Well, that’s as maybe but there’s a big wide world out there just waiting for you and which needs embracing.
I told you I was fickle...
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