Thought Picnic: Of habits and habitué

The difference is in the same

I cannot help being a creature of habit, much I seek adventure, I have a tendency to get comfortable with people, places, events, things and ideas. I do make the effort to break away from the mundane and the routine, but some things might just remain the same.

Returning to the same places where I went on holiday because the memories are wonderful and the sense of being and feeling was more than palpable if the hotel has been exemplary, it is unlikely that I will consider an alternative, the familiar loses peculiarity and becomes natural. I could say the same for restaurants and much else, I become a habitué.

I do not easily make friends, but the ones I do make, endure for decades, it is just the nature of who I am, I am quiet, reserved, introverted and in some ways conservative, though you won’t see me and think that.

The Left of mind, a right of loss

Then, when I was in Edinburgh, having been away from home for a week, checked out in the morning and went to work before going to the station to board a train back home. It was when I got back home that I realised I might have left two things in my hotel room.

A can of Brut Original Deodorant and a bottle of Hugo Boss Number One Eau de Toilette, the former I have used for almost 30 years, considering it came on the market in the year of my birth and if my memory serves me right, it used to be in my dad’s grooming kit. The latter I have used for nigh on 23 years, I have not been persuaded of any other deodorant or fragrance.

Now, these are no more in the shops, I must order Brut by bulk from Amazon, Hugo Boss, however, is a strange one, the carton says it was made in the UK, but no UK shop stocks the item. Bizarrely, I am only able to get this when I pass through the Charles de Gaulle airport duty-free shop in Paris and it is not getting any cheaper.

Beating myself harder than with a rod

So, you could imagine my sense of loss when a barely used bottle of Hugo Boss was inadvertently left in a hotel room and I had no inkling as to how to retrieve it. Like gloves, I always have at least one spare bottle to hand, but imagine my utter discomfiture when on returning from a trip to London, I could neither find another pair of these fanciful smell repellents.

I searched all bags, high and low, I could not for the life of me think of how I might have lost them again. For weeks, I was resigned to the fact that I had been a second time careless and had relapsed into mental flagellation occasioning regret.

At one time I had decided I would not more travel with them if I could not trust myself to keep them and return with them.

Redemption of self and soul

Then, a few days ago as I was rifling through my new trolley case for my laptops and work materials, I happened upon the zipped-up cavity where I had stored a power bank and there also was the can of Brut and a bottle of Hugo Boss.

I had neither lost nor misplaced them, I just did not remember they were there. I promptly forgave myself, thought about my possibly fading mental acuity and decided, the world is not lost, these things happen. The habit that has been going on for almost a lifetime serves its purpose, though year on year, I have watched the price of Hugo Boss rise by at least 15%, at such prices, one cannot afford to be careless or even carefree.

To each one his own and thankfully Hugo Boss Number One stands out as a class ahead of the rest because celebrity piss water flooded the shelves of perfumeries that if you venture into such shop floors, your departure will be greeted with a vapour trail of pongy effluent that polite company would rather don a gas mask than suggest you reek of the unmentionable.

To retain certain habits, you have to careful, mindful and resourceful, it is the only way to retain a sense of wellbeing and sanity.

Essential Snobbery 101: Look back in anger

All the loo roles

I know I like to play with alliterations, and a visit to a place downstairs just had me wondering how beneath the veneer of faux-respectability of people milling around, as co-workers are habits that leave much to be desired.

The loo, lavatory, latrine, ladies, toilet, gents, bog, urinal, cottage, water closet (WC) or convenience is a somewhat private place for movements and activity nature intended.

That we have found systems to manage and handle the different deposits is credit to creativity and ingenuity of man to bring elements of sophisticated, yet understated finesse to the handling of foul substances.

Noticing notices of note

Once upon a time, to evacuate really did mean to let things go from the bowels, but now, it is mostly used to mean getting people out of a building, especially out of dangerous buildings or vehicles.

There are things that are expected in these places that people do not feel disposed to do, and you end up reading notices like, “Please leave this place as you will like to find it” or “Please wash your hands”.

I would like to see in the men’s urinals notices that say, “Please do not spit your chewing gum into the urinal, ureic acid does not dissolve chewing gum, and furthermore, chewing gum is not biodegradable.” Men reading this will fully understand what I mean. I don’t chew gum.

Just clean up after you

Now, I cannot say why toilet bowls are white in most cases, but white is an implicit revelation of otherness when some things are not done. Especially when there is the option to flush the toilet and a toilet brush to help, “Please leave this place as you will like to find it” – I guess this notice implicitly suggests anyone visiting a toilet expects to find it clean, no matter how many other visitors have been before, if they all clean up after use.

I swore under my breath when the revelation on white was so unmissable, the earlier user could only have been so uncultured to have taken his anti-social skills back to the day of the Palaeolithic man. Whilst someone is paid to clean up after our mess, I do not think this was the kind of mess they were engaged to clean up.

That I can promptly lose respect for those who cannot look back in anger and ensure the next person looks in with a smile is my way of putting a four-letter word into a blog.

Please, always look back in anger when you have done your thing and “Please leave this place as you will like to find it. Thank you.”

Thought Picnic: Carelessly carefree

A realisation too late

Knowledge is an eye-opener, for with it comes revelation heretofore unbeknownst to the seeker.

I am always reading up on material that pertains to my health especially trying to understand the circumstances that presented my vulnerability to disease.

It was with some shock and ruefulness that I read up on two episodes that reduced my resistance to infection and compounded manifest symptoms.

Carefree and careless

In meeting certain needs, I had been carefree, in that I was not careful and thereby, I was quite careless.

One cannot deny that certain habits breed an attitude of being carefree, that in itself is not being careful about how the desires are met and when that issues with enough carelessness, care and caution are thrown to the winds.

What if I had known?

Going back, I have wondered if I ever had specific information or it was too general to appreciate what the consequences were.

I cannot remember any time when I really knew what I recently learnt. I could be sad, angry or even depressed, but since I can neither undo or change what is past, I might as well taken full responsibility for my carefree deeds and move on.

In essence, check, check it, check in, check out everything that needs checking and have it in check before no checks can save you from not having been careful where carefree situations present careless options.

Thought Picnic: A person I know

A foible I perceive

I try to contain my obsession and pedantry, sometimes with limited success. There is something about disorder that leaves me discomfited.

That is not to say that I am the neatest person around, yet, I do love neatness, arrangements or just patterns.

It probably started with numbers; codes, phone numbers, things like that. I always seem to find some relationship between the numbers that aids in recalling the number rarely as an ordered list, but more as how the relationships between the numbers allow for that order of numbers to exist.

An error I notice

Besides this, I tend to know when things seem to be out of place, a word spelt wrong, a portrait hung badly, contexts lost and much else. Somehow, that does not seem to apply to the first draft of my blogs until I go back to read them after publication.

This morning, I was literally driven to distraction when I noticed that the time on the clock for Madrid was the same as for Manchester – that ought not to be so, Madrid is an hour ahead.

Unfortunately, I could not get to speak to the office manager to correct the error, nothing is as upsetting as to keep the wrong time, I could be so put out by that.

A pattern I deduce

Maybe where the obsession gets the better of me was where the carpets in the hallway and stairwell of my apartment block were changed recently.

Someone chose to order a patterned carpet; rectangles of different sizes and with that came the need, my need, to determine the repeated frame of patterns on the carpet.

I knew eventually I was going to find out because I needed to know what order informed the design. When I did, it was strange to realise that the carpet had a repetitive pattern that took in 10 rectangles lengthwise and 8 rectangles breadthwise before the pattern was repeated.

What a sense of satisfaction I had on discovering that, it meant I did not have to be obsessed with the patterns on the carpet and I could still easily scope out the pattern of repetition.

An obsession I accept

It is probably a form of low spectrum autism that leaves me a bit vulnerable to supposing things are wrong when they are right just because what I expect to see is not what I have observed.

Over time, I have tried to moderate this doggedness to accommodate possibilities I have not yet assessed or discovered. It has also meant that in some situations, even when I am right I have held my counsel just to be sure that I have seen all angles to that situation before offering an opinion.

Whilst I have been called a perfectionist by some, I doubt I am anywhere near that, I’ll just say that sometimes I am compelled to be particular, and when I look at things from that perspective, I am probably alright. Yet, there is still much to learn and I am all eyes and ears for that too.