A Place To Stand

'There is a certain amount of kindness in this world, just as there is a certain amount of light. We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things; because the shadow always follows. Choose a place where you won't do harm - yes, choose a place where you won't do very much harm and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine'
A Room with a View - E M Forster

People never fail to amaze me. I wish that I could say that my amazement was a result of something sweet and unexpected, like a hoody giving up his seat on the bus for an elderly lady, or a modified, body-kitted Renault Clio driver stopping to let some kids cross the road, but in this case, it’s nothing quite so benevolent.

Life can be an odd mixture of ups and downs at the best of times, but the way I see it, we’re all trapped on this troublesome little planet together so we might as well do what we can to make things that little bit easier for someone else. Kind of a Pay It Forward idea, only, hopefully, without the rather horrific and totally demoralizing ending. It doesn’t have to take a great deal of effort, because I realize that anything outside the norm sometimes requires disengaging your brain from your butt for a while, but the small little things can make such a huge difference to someone else’s day.

Picture the scene. You’ve had a long day at work. All you want to do is get home, but you have to make a stop at the supermarket first because you have no milk for that cup of coffee when you get in. It’s busy there, just like it always is at about five when everyone else is trying to get home too, but you fight your way through the usual hurdles of Mr I Need An Entire Aisle to Manoeuvre My Trolley, Mrs I Have A Pram And That Entitles Me To Smack You In The Ankles With My Mclaren, Miss I Can’t Decide What Shampoo To Buy and Ms Stop Totally Without Warning And Then Glare At You When You Walk Straight Into Her, all with a patient, forbearing smile engrained on your haggard face as you take all the pains and tribulations that the supermarket deigns to hurl at your long-suffering soul. It’s all worth it, you tell yourself. Just think how good it will feel when you’re sat at home, your feet up, watching a bit of TV, enjoying that nice cup of coffee that you’ve struggled so hard to earn. You keep telling yourself that as you hit the checkouts and find the queue from hell. The sole cashier on duty is Chatty Kathy, who considers it her mission in life to lift everyone’s day by dissecting the contents of their shopping trolley.

I really don’t care, you think to yourself, at least an hour away from being served, patience beginning to flag just a little as you see time ticking away and you realize that it would have been quicker to go to a farm and milk the damn cow yourself.

But wait…what’s this? Another cashier? God be praised, it’s a miracle! Another cashier! You wait patiently while she adjusts her chair, fiddles with her monitor, checks how many carriers she has, then puts them away because she forgot that a customer has to get down on their knees and beg for one of those environmentally cataclysmic pieces of plastic before facing the walk of shame, treated like a social leper for being unable to carry milk, frozen peas, cat food, a bottle of wine and a packet of sugar in the bags under their eyes.

And just when she's ready, just when you move across to the other checkout, here comes Mrs My Emotional Crisis Is Much More Severe Than Yours from the back of the queue, moving as though she’s greased her heels with lard, to start unloading her cartload of pies, sausage rolls, crisps and Diet Coke onto the conveyor belt.

And that’s when murder begins to seem like a viable option. That’s when you begin to understand where D-Fens in the movie 'Falling Down' was coming from.

What is wrong with people? Does no one have any consideration for anyone else anymore?

Do me a favour - the next time you’re at a supermarket at the back of the queue and someone shouts ‘Next’, or the next time you’re tempted to take up a disabled space because you can’t be bothered to walk an extra ten feet, or you decide to drive past the poor guy who’s been stuck at a junction trying to pull out for the last ten minutes, spare a thought for your fellow human beings who may just have had an equally bad, if not worse, day than you.

You never know. Maybe one day, someone will have that same consideration for you.

Of All That Was Lost And All That Was Found

I have just finished reading ‘The Book of Lost Things’ by John Connolly, a truly gifted author, and, as usual when I reach the end of a good book, I find myself feeling a strange sort of grief. Reading has always been a huge pleasure for me and I can't help but feel a certain sadness and regret in the realization that no matter how many times I may re-read that story, it will never again have the same impact as it did that first time. Something is inevitably lost: that anticipation of events, surprise or anxiety as the story unfolds, the pleasure in the outcome. But there is also a hunger to know more, and it's always great to find that a particular author has written a whole series of books with your favourite protagonist, so there will always be new stories to read. Sadly, ‘The Book of Lost Things’ is not one of those stories. It is a stand-alone, and was always intended to be so, but even so, the effect this has had on me is a lasting one.

Deeply emotional moments are scattered throughout the whole book – from the loss of David’s mother, to the heart-breaking moment when David vents his anger and bitterness at his stepmother, to the truth behind the Crooked Man’s actions - but there is one chapter in particular that struck a resonance with me: ‘Of The Crooked Man’s Hidden Kingdom and the Treasures That He Kept There.’ A dark, foreboding, evil place, the Hidden Kingdom is filled with horrors - the woman with the mirrored eyes who shows those foolish enough to look into their depths the moment and manner of their death; the room where children learn of the things that parents do together when their bedroom door is closed at night; the room where jealous, suspicious spouses are shown their worst fears about their partners so that their relationships will forever be tainted by fear of betrayal and the tragedy that, in their petty jealousies, they bring about for themselves that which they fear the most.

Perhaps not everyone will read the story and see the same meanings behind the words that I did, but then every story has the ability to sit differently in the hearts of those who read it. For me, there are lessons to be learned in the story as a whole, but particularly within this chapter: cherishing the people around you; telling them the way you feel about them at every opportunity; accepting that loss is a part of life and that it is right and natural to move on, but doing so does not mean that you have to forget about those whom you have lost; refusing to give in to petty worries and jealousies that will destroy the joy and happiness that life has to offer; not seeking out knowledge of the future or worrying about what it may bring because in doing so, you lose the moments you have now.

Perhaps therein lies this book’s great dichotomy – not so much a moral tale of all that was lost, but a tale of all that was ultimately found – by the protagonist, certainly; but also by this reader, who has been left far richer for the experience.

Erm...

I guess that one of the most important things an aspiring writer needs to do is to get into the habit of writing. This seems a fairly logical thought to have, but that depends heavily on one's definition of writing. Scribbling text-speak peppered comments in Facebook updates or attempting to string together one or two semi-coherent sentences with one eye on the endless repeats of Last of the Summer Wine can't strictly be classified as a serious attempt to win over the literary world.

With one book currently seeking a home and a second one struggling for attention while its caregiver is constantly distracted by the need to steal cars and joyride through the streets of Liberty City or, damn it all, actually go to work for a living, structuring any serious kind of written output into my life is becoming the equivalent of trying to explain to a ten-year old that there is more to life than a PS3. Maybe that's because I haven't figured out myself what that 'more' is yet, but anyway...

This is my first step in what is hopefully the right direction. I'd like the second book to be produced in a slightly shorter time span than the first (which took five years) which means that some structure is, inevitably...er...inevitable. Hopefully I won't bore everyone to death and will manage to create something at least passably interesting on a fairly regular basis that won't have people suing me for loss of earning power due to brain death.

Will this classify me as a writer? Probably not...but it will help to salve my conscience that I've written something today, even if it is simply a scathing attack on Tesco's shortage of parsnips.