Fight or flight

It’s how we’re built.  Danger, uncertainty, you name it, humans are driven to one of two choices quickly.  We’re familiar with the phrase ‘fight or flight’ to describe how our bodies make these choices very rapidly, even where our brain is not quite tuned into what we’re doing.

When it’s a sabre tooth tiger, fair enough – and a straight forward choice.  But what of the colleague at work who sets us on edge, but who we have to keep working with?  What about the sudden crisis or the email that demands immediate action?  And what happens when, like it or not, we have to stay, for reasons of income, prestige, and so on?

Fight is not an option sanctioned by HR – at least, not the blow to the jaw type.  All flint-topped spears to be checked in at reception before proceeding into the main building.  While there’s various little fights going on with our environment, whether in our heads, our emails and so on, I suspect that flight is the main alternative for many of us.

And what is flight?  I thought to call this post ‘Escape’, and often that’s part of the fantasy, whether through holidays, through weekends away, or even just the late-night gig.  I guess I’m interested in thinking about the level to which we’re aware of our flight away from stresses, and the way in which it becomes hidden under other motives.

We have to eat.  No quibble there.  We have a nice range of foodstuffs available, lots of shops and eateries prepared to cater to us round the clock.  But the chocolate bar on the Friday afternoon to keep going, the swift drink on arrival home, how many of these are treats, and how many are little escape mechanisms for us?

Stone-age man had perhaps some difficulties staying in one place – what with needing to seek out food, protect himself from others who might take this from him, and so on.  Flight was probably forced on him more, but there were some advantages to it to.

Mortgage holders will know that flight becomes a more limited option when you have a reason to stay put year after year.  Marriage, families, all of these are built to benefit from you sticking around.  Hopefully, these things also mean you have less reason to flee, or even to fight so much to secure what you need.

But what happens when these responsibilities and different ‘threats’ seem to co-exist?  How, equally, do we keep the threats from spilling over into the other areas of our lives?

You can see from the length of this that I’m musing, rather than offering solutions.  The more I go on, the more I discover how many little escape hatches I use – and how, in various ways, they seem to become more necessary as life goes on.

Given that the blog offers its own means of escape, at times, I’ll reengage for now…for a bit, at least.  Sunday evening TV is all about escape.  Perhaps it’s time to do some more research.

Always gamble responsible

I’m a little concerned by health warnings.  Always drink responsibly…sounds like you shouldn’t consider stepping out of the door without a bottle in your hand.

The next issue to focus on is gambling, as mentioned by the coin machine shop by my bus stop.  Hanging about, waiting for the bus home, I have plenty of time to admire not just their pictures of Elvis on repeat on the screens by the shop window, but also the injunction: “Always gamble responsible”.

This one could of course be a trap by the grammar police – adjective or adverb, punk? – but it could equally be an opportunity for the punctuation secret service.  Just one comma, and it becomes the kind of suggestion you expect to come up in an arty film.

The screen flips to show “Always gamble, responsible”.  I should take this as my cue to hurl my work badge into the path of an oncoming bus, before diving into a nearby charity shop for a cocktail dress, as the scene shifts to the nearest speakeasy.

Perhaps I should go back to my roots as an English teacher.  Does it get any better if I substitute “Occasionally gamble responsible”? Sometimes I know when to fold, but mostly I push the chips forward with the air of a James Bond villain?

However these things get written, I can’t help but think they look more like an encouragement to go ahead with the problem behaviour, rather than to rein it in.  Maybe the ad men need some people to lose at gambling, so that they can further increase their earnings on a slogan that doesn’t actually work.

Well then.  That’s my “eats shoots” moment done.  Next week: stray apostrophes, which I have recently learned are known as the ‘grocer’s apostrophe’.  I’m sure there’s a link between fruit, and fruit machines, that I can work on.

Walentynki

That’s Valentine’s Day to you.  I just fancied writing it.  “Valentinky” has quite a nice ring to it too.

Why Walentynki?  I don’t really subscribe to the common concept of what Valentine’s Day is about in the UK.

As a teenager, you just kind of sulk about it (though there are so many things to sulk about as a teenager, I’m not sure how much others perceive the difference on this occasion).

As a young adult, the pang increases a little.  Now people possibly have some money to spend on the day.  But as much as anything, it’s just a reminder that others have someone in their lives and you don’t.  Which is not always a good thing to dwell on.  (At this stage you dwell on things, rather than sulking, possibly because you only have one main room to hang out in, so you can’t exactly run off to your room when it gets too much.)

In this stage of life, I happened to be in Poland during Valentine’s Day.  Both times were memorable, for different reasons.  The first time, I received a Valentine’s fax from a family friend.

Firstly, receiving a fax made quite an impact in the boarding school/convent where I was staying, and secondly, it reminded me that a world existed beyond the one in Poland I had joined just a week before.  (My family didn’t hear from me for a fortnight, the length of time it took to me first to remember and then to work out how to post my first letter from Poland.  Life pre-mobile eh?)

The second time, a sudden change in circumstances.  I had someone, I hadn’t been together with them the previous Valentine’s Day, and all of a sudden, this year, I was engaged.  And he was in a different country.  But I learned to be upbeat – particularly aided by seeing the enthusiasm with which Poles had taken to Valentine’s Day.

This was a holiday adopted after the end of Communism.  The flashy thing to do was take your true love out to McDonalds.  In fact, the drive-through McDonalds round the corner from where I lived had a photo montage of happy couples in McDonalds over Valentine’s Day.

From a UK perspective, it doesn’t seem very romantic.  But I liked the enthusiasm, the sense of rising to the occasion.  Rather than a slushfest, Valentine’s Day had become fun, cheerful even.

I didn’t take myself out for a McDonald’s that year, you may be pleased to hear.  I did buy myself flowers.  But I developed a liking for a sense of what a particular day could mean in a new context.

Walentynki.  You can’t just buy it in the shops.  But it’s what every relationship needs from time to time.

(Footnote: despite telling my colleagues that Dan and I don’t really ‘do’ Valentine’s, I returned home to a little parcel of Italian deli goodies that he had happily selected.  There’s another good aspect of Walentynki – having your expectations changed.  It’s a wise man that knows that a woman also appreciates the ‘way to one’s heart is through one’s stomach’.)

So, I salute Valentine perspectives with Peroni beer – and will save mention of the outcome of the other ingredients for another day.

Kit form

The home improvements continue…well, not apace, but at least they continue.

Part of the grand plan is to get more storage inside our wardrobes, and thankfully, the powers that be at IKEA foresaw that people would want to shift things around at different times, and created lots of nice holes to move new shelves into.

I wouldn’t put us as IKEA frequent flyers – it’s more like a once a year military operation, once we have secured someone’s car to make it worth our while.  But I do love a good kit to put together.  I do obviously let Dan have a go too, but I will even volunteer to put other people’s IKEA units together.

Why the appeal?  Kits are good news for those of us who aren’t so hot on drawing, or cutting things terribly accurately, but still want to make things.  It’s also quite fun to see things assemble gradually, particularly if they are a) big and b) handy for moving stuff off the floor/bottom of other wardrobes etc.

I tend to think that liking kits is also part of learned behaviour.  Dad was very into model making when I was little, and I graduated to this myself in various forms: plaster of Paris moulds for various things you could then paint, peg dolls, soft toys.

Best of all was a model theatre – first you made the theatre from card, then you had a full opera and ballet with backdrops, bits to move on from the sides, fiddly characters to cut round, the works.  I even learned the story of ‘La Boheme’ from the synopsis they included with the kit, which comes in handy for watching ‘Moonstruck’ in later life.

Recently, makers of kits have been staging a comeback.  Makers of Airfix kits – model aeroplanes and so on – decided to run an ‘experiment’ where one group of kids got to make a model, and the others got to play on their Playstations, or something similar.  At the end of the time, those making models were asked if they would do it again, and if they liked it more than their usual computer game type hobbies.

I’m never too sure with tests like this how representative the findings are, but evidently a good number of the kids said yes, they’d give it another go.  Besides, there are still kit cars you can make (and get a Q at the start of your number plate – a definite incentive), and even kit houses for those who want to build their own but fancy a bit of help.  Onwards and upwards, see.

Getting plastered

Honest, ossifer, not even once.  But I couldn’t resist the title.

Little by little, the Frydman decorating project moves on, and the next stage is to get some rooms replastered.  This gives us the opportunity to move furniture from room to room in order to clear the rooms that need plastered…Thank goodness for a spare room at the moment, otherwise we would be struggling a bit to find space to put things into.

So far, it’s mostly the bookcases that are getting moved. I’m quite pleased to see that the study walls stay up without their usual counterweight of books.  With the annual bookfair in Peebles next month, it’s also a good time to do our usual book cull, and decide what can be donated for the fair.

The biggest excitement will be getting the kitchen replastered, which should mean we can finally paint it white, and banish the last trace of terracotta paint.  (Apologies if you are of a burnt umber persuasion.  It’s nice and warm, sure, but in small dark spaces lit by a still pretty dark Scottish winter, the desire for more light is going to win out.)  But it seemed like a good opportunity to tidy up the sitting room and the study at the same time, so we’re hoping to get all three done around the same time.

But the final aim is an even better one – get the plaster and paint done, then finally replace the carpet.  If terracotta walls get me down, don’t get me started on the sitting room carpet.  Hopefully we can now get something we’d like.

It was good enough getting Mum to make us curtains of our choice – carpet as well will be tremendous.  (You’ll be pleased to hear we aren’t forcing Mum to make the carpets as well.  Talk about nose to the grindstone.)

Is it all needed? Less than the leaky bathroom project.  But learning from the enjoyment we have of a bathroom that we actually chose, I think it’s well worth it, particularly for the sitting room which we spend a lot of time in.

You never know.  I may even learn to upload some photos, finally, to show off the finished product.  A few more bookcases to move first, though.