Like hell

I have developed, in the last two years of my life, a new vision of hell in which I set off from home without my reading glasses. Until two years ago there were other kinds of hell to do with forgetting the essentials, but this is something else entirely. That’s the kind of age I’ve reached.

So just at the time of my life when I feel a mighty urge to simplification, the structure of life becomes doubly complicated. Faulty eyes are nothing new to me (I’m used to the glasses/contact lenses dichotomy), but negotiating that tricky path between the near and far now takes up much of my attention. My multitasking prowess is shot to pieces, and I’m either here, seriously concentrating on the task at hand, or I’m there, taking in the bigger picture. But I’m never both.

And on the train, apart from the odd glance out of the window as I come up for air and get my bearings, the task at hand is where my focus lies. I know that I’m not the first to avail myself of such opportunities for concentration: Stella Gibbons wrote the whole of Cold Comfort Farm on the move, apparently, and of course we have the very recent (and very local) example of Oliver Gozzard and his Commuter’s Tale. My efforts are nowhere near as concerted, but I’m head down, I’m busy, and I couldn’t bear to be anything else.

And if those reading glasses get left behind, then all I can do is sit and stare and wonder: how do all you others manage who let those endless hours slip away unused? Are you really doing nothing? That seems to me like hell.