People who tell you that they live their lives in the moment are, in my experience, only doing so because they are afraid of their future or ashamed of their past. These are people for whom thinking of anything other than the fork in their hand or the song in their head or the next step they are going to take frightens them so much that they pretend it is some kind of inspiring and advisable philosophy to do simply whatever it occurs to them to do at that moment in time.
Not only does this life philosophy appal me, I am also annoyed by the fact that it is me who is preached at for having forgotten what it is to be truly alive. Optimists and thrill seekers are riddled with sicken-ingly sweet sayings and mottos that serve to reinforce their flawed beliefs. People who style their hair for hours to make it look as though it hasn’t been styled at all will send you emails with pictures of cats doing water sports and taglines like ‘Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift, that’s why they call it the present.’
The problem with simplistic and poetic sentiments such as these is that they sound so nice and catchy. I can understand completely why people choose to think that way, of course. Who doesn’t want to believe that every day of their life is a perfectly wrapped gift from the hands of fate? Well, it isn’t, not as far as I am concerned. There are no easily quotable sayings about just knuckling down and getting on with life in all its inconsistent and unfair glory, and if there were, they wouldn’t rhyme or have witty wordplays so people would choose to ignore them. There is simply too much to be done for us all to go around ‘enjoying ourselves’. When the world is perfect, then we can all sit down and eat jelly beans, but for now the fact that things are going well for you just means that you are in a position to alleviate someone else’s suffering for a while.
Not living in the present doesn’t mean not enjoying life at all – far from it! Things can be enjoyed all the more when you appreciate the sacrifice and hard work that went into their organisation, like a slow-cooked piece of meat. All the gristle and toughness that were there at the beginning have been worn away through consistent application of heat over time to leave behind something as smooth as silk. Brace yourselves for plenty more unjustifiable food similes. When you plan your life properly every day can be as exciting as Christmas Eve and you never have to suffer the come-down that is Boxing Day. Just look at Boxing Day as the eve of the eve (and so on) of Christmas Eve.
I seem to be at a time of life where my thoughts are involuntarily turning towards more permanent things, relationships that will last and where I want to be when I settle down, but I also know that I’m still at an age when I should be enjoying my freedom and taking risks and making mistakes.
Apparently ‘making mistakes’ is what your youth is for and, whilst I can’t say I agree, I will certainly concede that life was a lot simpler when I wasn’t expected at all to be thinking long term and living from day-to-day was simply how it was. I am no longer sure that I am a better balanced person with a greater understanding of myself for having spent the last ten years taking life so seriously. Perhaps I should have spent more of my time in nightclubs, having promiscuous sex with people I never intended to see again? It just never appealed to me.
The last time I went back to a girl’s house for an impromptu house party I spent most of the night straightening out rugs, putting down coasters and alphabetising DVDs while all around me people got off with whoever was closest and gradually headed off to various rooms to make more mess, no doubt. I ended up getting violently drunk, tutting at a number of strangers and walking home. I only just about made it.
Personally I alphabetise my DVD collection, but like most of the things I do I maintain that this is nothing to do with OCD, this is simply common sense. How can you expect to find the film you are looking for if you do not have a system in place on the shelf? Given that the likely piece of information you have about what you want to watch is its title, it is logical to sort them thus.
Obviously if you are the kind of person who thinks, ‘I’m not sure what I want to watch but I want it to have been directed by John Hughes’, then you may sort by director, but who does that? The alphabetised system is one that is easy to identify so there is no excuse for replacing a DVD wrongly and yet people do it simply to annoy me. If I have guests, rare though the occasion may be, after each trip to the toilet or into the kitchen I will return to a room filled with sniggering guests staring at me intently.
‘We’ve moved something!’
And the gales of laughter continue as I move around looking for the swapped DVDs or the rotated ornament, like Annie Wilkes in Misery. Perhaps the reason I don’t have guests more often is the gleeful way in which they try to make me feel uncomfortable in my own home, or perhaps they move things as a way of making themselves feel more comfortable. Such a sanitised environment cannot be easy to relax in, so perhaps they are trying to make themselves feel at home, which I suppose is valid. I myself resent being asked to remove my shoes when entering a friend’s house, even though I understand the reasoning behind it. It nevertheless sets a precedent for a visit which must leave behind no reminder. When you leave, I don’t even want to know you were ever here.
Must I really make a mess to make people feel comfortable in my house? How far do we go in making ourselves appear weak to elevate those around us? This willingness not only to expose weaknesses but to revel in them is what has led to the misguided belief that breaking wind in front of your partner is some kind of display of trust.
‘I love you so much I want you to see all sides of me, inside and out.’
I have argued with several people who believe that breaking wind is a part of life and therefore should not be hidden from someone you care about once you are over the initial dating period in which the desire to impress is paramount.
I am of the opinion that there is never a point in a relationship at which it stops being a lack of respect for someone near to you to force them to inhale the smell of your own semi-digested gut slurry. Even writing these words makes me feel uncomfortable and you can call it anal retention or weirdness if you like but if you truly can’t be bothered to leave the room to break wind then you are on a slippery slope which ends with you leaving the toilet door open and continuing a conversation with your partner while you void your bowels.
Such is my desire only to see the best parts of my partner and vice-versa that I must confess to being able to remember each time I have seen someone I was in love with fall over. I cannot help but be disappointed by such a shocking inability to perform such a simple task as staying upright. I can’t remember the last time I fell over, mostly because if it does happen it is through drunkenness which gladly takes my ability to remember anything at all away with my dexterity, but I place my feet very carefully to avoid the possibility. If we learn to walk as toddlers how can it be that, once we have mastered the basics, we accept that we don’t get any better at it? As a fully grown adult I expect at very least that I will be able to stay upright in polite society at all times.
LOOKING FOR MS VERY VERY VERY TIDY
I hope this book won’t be a predictable journey: I’m no rule-following loser all the time! I even took my dinner out of the microwave last night barely thirty seconds into the required one minute resting time. That’s right, I’m bad too, when I need to be and when I have properly assessed the potential risk. Deal with it. A few small indiscretions aside, I’m not unaware that my life isn’t following the patterns for someone my age. Even I catch myself doing things that I would be embarrassed for anyone else to find out about. In the spirit of full disclosure, here is a list.
* I find myself washing up at eleven p.m. on a Saturday night
Nothing makes me feel more like a loser than seeing myself reflected in the kitchen window wearing marigolds and scrubbing at soufflé moulds on what is widely accepted to be ‘party night’. I wouldn’t want to be out at a club, and I don’t want to wake up on Sunday morning with a load of dirty dishes staring me down while I make a cup of
tea, but still I am aware of how my situation looks and cannot help but feel as though in the eyes of my peers I ought to be ashamed, which isn’t much worse than actually being ashamed.
* I smile more at dogs than their owners
I have rarely met a dog I didn’t like. Little fat dumpy ones, who look like grumpy old men as they waddle down the street; big, tall hairy ones, who look as though they are trying to convince you that they are really too cool to be tied up outside Wilkinson’s; bright-eyed, bouncy, energetic ones, who make no effort to disguise the fact that every second of their life is a revelation to them, they want to meet everyone, to smell everything and to run as fast as possible at all times. I wish I felt the same.
* I laugh at jokes the Eggheads make
I watch this teatime quiz without exception while I have my first glass of wine on days when I do not have to work. My favourite kind of people to watch on television are those who give off the impression that no matter how much they do, they will never quite be any good at it. Nervous, embarrassed by their immense founts of knowledge, the Eggheads are the ringleaders of this club. You’d be more likely to find them sharing a packet of pork scratchings at your local real-ale pub than on the red carpet at a movie premiere, and that’s suits me just fine.
* I cut recipes out of magazines (and bake them)
Weekend magazines are filled with what are, in reality, middle-class lifestyle pornographic photographs rather than recipes. It’s not that any of us really believe that we will one day spend our weekends making oxtail soup from scratch and serving it in hearty bowls on wooden boards with home-made bread fresh from the Aga, but for the two hours we spend leafing through someone’s discarded pull-out supplements in the pub on a Sunday afternoon. I do; I have to hold on to the dream.
* Wearing an apron
Not even a novelty apron, at that. Middle-aged husbands tending to barbecues in the summer can wear novelty aprons – that is all.
Whether you are a lot like me, a more extreme version of me, or scarcely recognisable as the same species as me, I hope that you will discover in yourself something of the obsessive. I truly do think we all have something deep down inside us that annoys us irrationally and that this sometimes unexplainable response is part of what makes us human.
Perhaps without thinking, you will take a toilet roll off its holder when visiting a friend’s house, and replace it the other way around to ensure that the roll unravels forwards rather than down the back against the wall. Perhaps you subconsciously clean the rim of your wine glass with your napkin in a restaurant or have an overwhelming urge to straighten paintings that rest crooked. The part of you that makes your legs tingle with the urge to get up and correct a poorly hanged piece of art is the same as the part of me that makes me keep all the items on my desk parallel with one another. It is a belief in the right way of things even if you cannot always explain why it seems so right.
Some authors travel through time with their readers, others take them to far off shores. In the quest on which you are about to accompany me – to find my Significantly Tidy Other – I will basically lock you in an enclosed space with a lunatic.
Large, deep, metaphysical questions will come bubbling up to the surface, like why, if my execution of everything has been so perfect, have I not been in a relationship for such a long time? Is the problem really with everyone else, or is there something wrong with me? Is there someone out there who could make all this better, and if I found them would I ruin it by expecting too much of them?
I suppose the ultimate question I am asking is: who is responsible for our own happiness, is it ourselves, or the person we are constantly looking for? Is my happiness really down to me … Or is it you?
It is probably worth asking at this point, who exactly is my perfect woman? Attractive? Yes. Intelligent. Of course. Blah blah blah … All of these things together? Absolutely not! What on earth would a woman like that be doing with a man such as myself? Cheating on him, that’s what.
Just the thought of this makes me feel stressed and uncomfortable, and whenever I feel stressed and uncomfortable, there is only one remedy: I have to sit down and write a ‘To do’ list. So I turn to tomorrow’s date and start scheduling …
SATURDAY
11.39
CLOSE EVERY DOOR
I definitely remember dropping a bin bag half filled with rubbish into my wheelie bin on the way to my car. I remember putting my suitcase in the boot, beside my emergency box and climbing into the driver’s seat. I turned the key in the ignition – I remember that because the radio came on and they were talking about rap music so I turned it straight off – and then I pulled out of my driveway and on to the road. After driving about two hundred metres I signalled left – though nobody was behind me – and pulled over to the side of the road, stopped and applied my handbrake. This is where I have been for around three minutes now. It has started.
Did you lock the door?
The trouble is that while I’m thinking about whether I locked the door, I’m also thinking about Gemma.
I cannot stop thinking about her, which is a problem. I am certain that she would absolutely hate it if she knew what I was doing now and I do not want her to end up hating me. I just don’t know how you explain this kind of thing to someone who could never understand living this way.
It is an unfortunate fact that you have to have once loved someone to even begin to be truly capable of hating them. People often say that they hate certain comedians but they don’t really – they just don’t like their jokes or else are jealous of their success. I don’t mind someone saying they hate me when I know they don’t know who I am, but I can’t bear someone who once loved me pretending that they don’t hate me when I know they do.
But … did you lock the door?
Why does this always have to happen? It isn’t just when I drive – I can be on foot or even with other people. One of my lowest points was asking a taxi driver to return to my house halfway along our journey to the train station so that I could be sure I had locked the door. I can still hear the surprise in his voice now: ‘Go back, mate? Really?’ I told him I had forgotten my passport so that he wouldn’t think I was weird, but I felt bad anyway. Having to invent a fictional short-haul trip to France to cover the fact I had so little luggage with me was no mean feat either. Step forward the fictitious ‘sick relative’, no more questions asked. Besides, he was glad of the extra fare, I am sure.
My fear comes from years of living alone, with no one but me to take responsibility for my mistakes. If I don’t do something, it doesn’t get done – it is as simple as that. I absolutely refuse to go back this time though, no way. Things have changed. Each day I retrace my steps a number times, to check whether or not doors and windows have been locked, fridges closed, lights turned off, and each time I do so I find that I’ve always done what I thought I hadn’t. I have to accept that I am a worrier and I do not forget to do things like locking the door – that is what other people do, people who aren’t trying as hard as I am. But then again perhaps I have lulled myself into a false sense of security this time. Perhaps this time the door really is unlocked and I will be making a mistake if I don’t go back. It would be worse to have stopped and decided to carry on than not to have considered the possibility at all. Once my neighbour knocked on my door to tell me that I had left my car window down, so I am unreliable. Admittedly it was years ago now and nothing bad happened as a result, but still it sows seeds of doubt in my mind – you only have to fail once to be a failure. If I wait here any longer I will have wasted as much time as I would have by going back to check whether the door was locked after all. I have to make a decision.
I think you left it open, because you rushed down the driveway to put the bin bag in the wheelie bin and forgot to go back and lock the door.
Now, that seems plausible; I absolutely could have done that. A few net curtains twitch around me to remind me that I am disturbing the order of things, as if the houses themselves are
winking at me in sly warning, like a Cockney down a dark alley, though in truth it is simply the inquisitiveness of the people behind who have nothing better to worry about than whether a stranger is in their midst.
I have lived in Swindon for five years now, and to me it is something of a Goldilocks town, in that it is just the right size for what I need. If it were any bigger, decision-making would be rendered utterly impossible by having too many options for which shop/restaurant/ post office to use. Equally, any smaller and it would make impossible the chances of disappearing into a shapeless crowd when out and about.
This is a town where you might recognise faces but never need to know names. The kind of place where you can be ‘the guy who is always in the chip shop at the same time as me on a Friday’ but need never become ‘Alan, who is married to Sarah, who used to work at the Cash and Carry but lost his job because he was caught sniffing women’s shoes in the changing rooms so now works from home but really is supported by Sarah because he’s too embarrassed to leave the house because he knows we spend most of our time talking about him and will do until something happens to someone else whose life need not affect us save for the fact we have so little else to talk about.’
People who have lived here all their lives will tell you that the traffic is bad or that crime is worse than it used to be, but those of us who have had experience of living in bigger cities will tell you that the traffic is rarely beyond manageable and, if you didn’t scour the local newspaper on a daily basis, you would barely notice the petty crime that goes on. I lived in Bristol long enough to see that Swindon is actually a fairly quiet place. I left five years ago because the people I was living with had seen too much of my weakness for them to have the respect for me I wish for. The city echoed with mistakes I had made and everywhere the memories of failures I made earlier made it difficult for anything to seem perfect ever again. I wonder if there will ever be a place I can foresee spending the rest of my life in. More likely it is me who will change; one day I will stop caring about the mistakes of the past. Hopefully.
It's Not Me, It's You Page 3