Slow Learner

See?

This is what happens if you come out of the submarine, forget yourself, relax and start living in the moment.

Warbling away on my fencepost. Then maybe just noticing out the corner of an eye my possible fate.

I can outrun it for now, but I'm on borrowed time.

Like I said, I'm a slow learner.

From the Archive: May 2008

I was thinking again about choice and chance, and it made me remember a post I'd written in 2008.

One door closes, another door opens. That’s a nice idea.

Thing is, life doesn’t always work like that, does it? There are times when one door closes, and - it just closes. The opportunity has gone and it won’t be coming back. John Lennon was shot and now you’ll never see the Beatles play live.

You wouldn’t close one of these doors if you thought there was the tiniest prospect you might want to pass through it later. Maybe sometimes you don’t have a choice. Or what about those times when you didn’t even realise the door was there until you hear it clang shut ominously behind you? Or the sudden breeze and then there’s a slam - is that bad luck? Or random? Or part of the cosmic pattern? The beat of a butterfly’s wing on the other side of the world?

The path-in-the-wood analogy is one we love, so evocative. But even when we’ve chosen the road less travelled, and wandered down it quite happily for ages, it gives a feeling that perhaps we could re-trace our steps and choose the other path later if it didn’t turn out as we’d hoped.

Life just isn’t like that.

Maybe this realisation is the part where we finally grow up. The part where we start to understand that some doors are closed to us forever now. The part where we have to accept that and look onwards to the bright doors that are still ahead of us.

Does it get easier, in time, to do that? After a while, will I stop looking behind me to those tightly-closed doors tinged the soft dove-grey of regret?

Soho Afternoons

Here's to long boozy lunches that carry on in the pub until 6pm.

Sometimes you just don't wanna go home.

Lying Awake, Thinking

Sometimes, though, I can identify specific points where the path forked. Sometimes I think I made a good choice, sometimes I wish I'd made a different one.

I say to myself that I live my life without If Onlys and What Ifs, but I don't think that's really true. I am trying to reassure myself that everything is ok. Nowadays I seize the moments that present themselves, but the path has less and less branches the more that time goes on.

I'd have liked to have tried some of the other routes. It is hard to consider other possibliities without feeling - wistful.

The Path

Every time I go to London on the train, I see the path.

I've been travelling this route for sixteen years now, give or take, and the path is haunting me. Summer and winter it cuts up across the hillside, on the diagonal and into the woods. Then just beyond at the end of the hill is a large open building looking out across the valley.

I've finally looked this structure up and it's called the Dashwood Mausoleum, reputed meeting-place of the Hellfire Club, so I kind of knew of it after all. It's not the building that interests me though, it's the path itself.

Sometimes there are walkers on the path, sometimes it just stretches upwards towards the tree line, beckoning. Every time I pass it, I feel that I'm passing by a different life, a life where I am walking up to the woods. I dream about this path, about treading its short green turf, about turning back at the edge of the shadows to see the train going past in the dip of the valley.

We talked about that today. About the forks in the road, the labyrinth of probability and its infinite possibilities. If he hadn't caught that bus, if I hadn't accepted that job.....we wouldn't be here now. But where would we be instead, and would it really be that different? He thought maybe yes, I thought maybe not.

So he misses the bus, and he doesn't meet the girl who became his wife. He meets a different girl on a different night, another clever girl, studying hard like him. He gets qualified, she gets qualified. They get married, have some children, he travels on the train into work at the bank, the minstry, the firm.

I don't take the job, I go for something different. Do I stay married to the kind, brotherly friend from university? Or do I still leave him for someone who seems like a bold and different choice but ultimately turns out to be - unsuitable? How many of the choices we make are predicted by our nature? And what is the balance between chance and choice? I think we might still end up where we are.

If two people were in the same place at the same time, let's say at the same parties at university, or working round the corner from one another for years, or travelling in from the same part of town - were they always meant to meet, or never supposed to? And if they do, is it fate or random meaningless chance?

I don't think any of the choices I've made would have led me to a life where I was walking up a grassy path on a work day, watching the train go by at the bottom of the hill. I wouldn't see an appeal in that life until I'd already lived this one. Maybe it's not my parallel existence, maybe it's my future?

One day soon I am going to take the 0649 not in my suit and heels but in my walking boots. I'm going to get off at High Wycombe, walk back down the line to the start of the path and stride up to the top of the hill, through the trees and out to the clear grass in front of the building. I'm going to have a cup of tea from my flask and watch the trains go by.

Life doesn't change until you make different choices, I guess.

The Price of Coal

The official death toll for the mining industry in China last year was 2,631. If that's the official figure, imagine what the actual figure must be.

It's hardly a wonder their coal is cheaper than ours.

You might as well stack dead bodies up like kindling outside the power stations.

Girls Night Out

I was getting ready to go dancing. I don't go out often and I was looking forward to it. Ten of us were going, all girls, good friends.

Getting ready is almost as much fun as going out itself. I never realised this until I had the children, and had a decade of getting ready (on those rare occasions we went out) in the few minutes between settling the kids down and leaving the house. So now I have time again I relish the process. Shower, body scrub, body lotions and potions, all manner of concoctions for soft and silky hair. Toenails, fingernails, curlers, make up, perfume and choosing the right outfit.

Tonight I'd chosen cool but casual. Fresh cotton tunic over a white vest, jeans, and my red dancing shoes. Lipstick to match and we were all set, the girlfriends arriving any second for cocktails before a giggly stroll to town around ten.

I was in a great, great mood. I love music, dancing, fun. "You should come with us next time!" I said to him. "Jim will be there, and Andy, and the music is great. It would be fun to go in a big group".

He looked at me and frowned. "You don't get it, do you?"

It would appear not.

"I won't be going anywhere with you. Not now, not in the future. You look terrible. You look fat. You look ridiculous. I'm ashamed to be seen with you. Why do you think I don't take you along to anything?"

I stopped in my tracks. Looked in the mirror.

"You're exposing the children to a serious risk of being bullied at school. People will be talking about you. It's not nice for the girls".

I didn't go dancing. No amount of getting ready was going to make any difference.