On running to and from
And learning to tell the difference
I am on a train, headed north. The furthest north I have ever been in this country. In the distance, we are surrounded by, to my ill-informed eye, snow-capped mountains, but I don’t doubt the climbers amongst my friends will be quick to inform me that they are just a handful of Scotland’s 282 munros and amongst the least impressive.
As we pull out of Perth, a small red car sits in the middle of a field, ignored by disinterested sheep. There’s cold black coffee and half a stale muffin on the table in front of me and four seats to myself. Which never happens when you’re heading in the other direction. (Travel Lumo and you’re lucky to get one.) The train is near deserted. In the arse-end of January, on a dreich midweek morning, with a windchill of minus ten (toasty compared to last weekend’s minus 20) it seems nobody much wants to go to the Highlands. Which is why I am.
I am heading to a friend’s cottage to get my head down and write for 72 hours. (Thanks to the excellent advice I shared with you before – scroll right to the bottom of this article to find it – I have, against all odds, crosses everything, dislodged my fiction-writing block. A block that has been in residence for several years.) And so I’m sneaking away. Away from cats and coffee shops and a consistent broadband signal and the TV with its endless streaming services and builders and the other distractions of life. Oh, and the fridge. But particularly cats. Sitting on my notes, strolling across my keyboard, scratching my chair, climbing up my hair, kicking things off my desk. All those cat memes don’t go viral for nothing. (With apologies to J who, in my absence, is almost definitely on the receiving end of all these things, except for the hair climbing.)
There’s just one problem. For all the things I’m able to leave behind, I’m still taking myself with me and invariably the distraction is me. My brain has what you might call a focus problem, unless I’ve got a hard and fast deadline (like right now) it’s endlessly diverted, by something, anything… what’s that over there? Much as I blame Sausage the cat, the truth is the IT guy’s favourite put down, PICNIC. (Problem in chair, not in cat.)
I don’t know who it was who originally said, “wherever you go, there you are”, (I’ve Googled it and found four different attributions on page one, including Confucius and Einstein, so who knows?), but that right there has always been my problem. Although it took me the best part of 50 years to realise it.