Questions Answered

Following on from this…

Marv asked: “When you get out of the shower, which part of your body do you dry first?”

When I was a kid someone, I think my grandma, told me I should dry from the top down, because if you work from the bottom up your wet top will drip onto your dry bottom (as it were) meaning you have to start over again. So I start with my head, move down my arms, then torso, then groin area and finally legs and feet. This is not some obsessive thing, just a habit built up over 25 or so years. On a tangent, it puzzled me for years why my towel ended up soaking wet and needing a good radiator or ventilated space to dry out while the towels of the various females I’ve shared an abode with just end up mildly damp and can be hung anywhere, and since I haven’t shared towel drying space with a bloke for ages I could never be sure if it was a gender difference or something I was doing wrong. I tried drip-dying for a minute or so before engaging the towel but that made no difference. Then it suddenly flashed into my mind that, as a bloke, I’m kinda hairy while women, on the whole, aren’t. Bingo.

Jez asked: “When did (or will) you consider yourself to be a “grown-up”?”

There are probably loads of times when I’ve come to a realisation that I’m “grown up”. A recent one was last year when I was walking down to the local shops and had to pass through the gang of Chavs that hang out at the Circle. (And yes, I know Chav is a class-based derogatory term but in this case it’s 100% accurate, trust me on this.) At first I was nervous, flashing back to when I was a teenager and would have been threatened by such youths, but then it occurred to me that, at 33, I was old enough to be their dad, which explained why they were ignoring me. I was a grown up and therefore beneath their notice.

That said, I don’t identify at all with my peers who have proper careers, families and the like. (Yourself excepted for some reason, Jez) and often feel like I’m living a different life to most 30-somethings. Sometimes this feels like a legitimate alternative existence but sometimes I do feel somewhat immature. Usually the former, I’m glad to say. When I get around to Brendadada’s question about being an Uncle I’ll expand on this. On the whole, though, the fact that I often realise I’m a grown up probably says a fair bit abut whether I really am or not.

Brendadada asked: “Sameyness in shops, they way people dress, the cityscape, anything samey. Hmm?”

On the whole a bad thing, but you’ve got to be careful. Remember the village theory. As human beings we evolved in small communities but in the last few hundred years we’ve started living in massive ones. The way we cope with this is by stereotyping and categorising things until they become familiar. So to jump back a couple of paragraphs, when I see the youths at the Circle I lump them all into the “Chav” category and think no more about them. Actually, this happened last week. When I went to the tedious not-transistor checking job I recognised one of the temps from somewhere but couldn’t figure it out. He definitely recognised me though and it turned out we were working at that Tyre factory I moaned about and that he was one of the principle baboons that were pissing me off so much. But here he was on his own, chav-wise, just me, three African guys and the supervisor. Now, he’s still an idiot but we’ve been talking during breaks and he taught me some card games and stuff. He’s now an individual human being in my view rather than a stereotype. And I don’t think I was wrong to judge him in that way back then. I just don’t have the capacity to treat every person as an individual and there has to be a cut off point.

You can take this theory to pretty much anything you experience in life. Shopping centres, for example. I hate shopping centres. They all have the same shops none of which have anything of interest to me and the layouts and ambiance I find oppressive. But there are people for whom these environments are very attractive and they can spot the nuances and differences between the shops. Okay, I’m stretching this one a bit. Howabout comics? I know my comics really well and can judge the relative merits of comic art on many many levels, but most people will judge it on really basic criteria such as “readable”, “nice” and “pretty” with the general conclusion that it’s all a bit samey because they’re just not used to looking at it in a critical, deep way. And that’s fine. A little frustrating, but fine. I’m the same with clothes. Or potatoes. A potato is a potato in my book, but an expert in spuds would be horrified at my ignorance.

On the whole, then, when it comes to groups of people I’m very cautious about saying they’re all the same. There are similarities but even with a room full of goths each one will be an individual. Of course, when it comes to the commercial realm it can be a problem. Take, for example, Waterstone’s who I worked for for years. For years bookselling in this country was the antithesis of samey but as Waterstone’s became a massive corporate presence they started consolidating their business bringing in elements of sameyness. Which is not a bad thing in itself, but they continued to put over this image that they had massive range and were not all samey. Which was a lie. But to the average punter the range still seemed impressively large, which is understandable. A drop from 10,000 titles to 5,000 might be obvious to a seasoned bookseller but to someone who reads a book a month it’s not noticeable.

Anyway, not as clear cut as you might think this one…

More questions please!