Staying Home.

There was an Autumn Fayre at the village hall today. I didn’t go. And there’s a Bonfire Night bash at the village pub tonight (it sounds like a re-enactment of the Battle of the Somme at this very moment.) I’m not attending that little get together either.

The problem is, you see, that every time I’ve added my presence to such events and moved among the assembled multitude, I’ve been reminded that I don’t fit in here. I don’t accept that things are right just because they’re traditional. I don’t vote for the Tory candidate in general elections because he wears a blue tie and blue is true. I don’t feel comfortable with the odour of jingoism which hangs in the air like the sickly smell of cheap disinfectant. I’m not even a patriot because I see blind patriotism as the refuge of the small and simple minded. (Note the word ‘blind.’ When Trump sends his minions over here to pollute Scotland with golf courses, then I become a patriot – of sorts.) And I don’t understand why the person who grew the roundest potatoes for the vegetable competition should become a local celebrity.

Then again, I suppose I should admit that in terms of habitation I probably don’t belong anywhere. I don’t belong in the shires, the suburbs, the town centres or the inner cities. I belong in my own world and nowhere else. If there’s somebody with whom I can connect in any of them, I’m grateful and my life is all the richer for it. Otherwise, I’m on my own.

There used to be somebody in the Shire with whom I connected and my life was, indeed, all the richer for it. But she moved on to some other Shire over yonder hill and the richness evaporated like a raindrop in the desert. There’s nobody here to connect with now, so now I stay home.