My outlook on life has always been short-term – and so it is with Michael Morrison, the main character in my novel The Choreography of Ghosts.
A Sunday would always carry the extra weight of the day to come, be it school or work, a Tuesday, almost half-way, Friday – it’s the weekend, with all that it brings.
I couldn’t see as far ahead as the next month, certainly not the next year. I might not make it that far.
I was never doing my homework until the night before, revising for May’s exams in March or making any decision as to what I wanted to be “when I grew up” any earlier than half-way through the Upper Sixth. Or indeed until the final year of my degree was completed. A job would mean new responsibilities, a more mature outlook.
My dad sat me down and said: “You want to look at paying into a pension lad. As much as you can afford. You need to plan for retirement. You don’t want to end up working all your life like me."
The words “As much as you can afford” clinched it. To me, it meant nothing. Not what he was saying, but the amount I could afford. Literally. After all, I wouldn’t be able to go out every night and spend the rest of my money on records if I was investing in a future that may never happen.
Did it happen? I don’t know because I had no idea what “it” was meant to be. I couldn’t look that far ahead. Still can’t – and there’s not that far to look any more. What once was the time equivalent of a journey from Yorkshire to Cornwall now ends in a motorway service station car park this side of Birmingham.
I knew some things I might want to happen, but the route to any desired destination had too many twists and turns, too many roads for me to navigate.
“Have you thought about going this way lad?” my dad would say, while proffering a map, every time I embarked on a journey far enough to involve any mode of transport other than foot. I hadn’t. Couldn’t. It’s still the same.
Somehow though, every time, I get somewhere. Even if it’s not where I wanted or intended to go. “We all end up in the same place,” dad would say, almost contradicting his advice to do your best to ensure your life was better than others.
Michael Morrison is the same as me. Inevitable that he would be, I suppose. The fog that clouded my mind also clouded his and blocked any routes signposted “solutions” to his problems, so he stumbled down endless cul-de-sacs until making the sudden decision to move from Bradford to Italy to tackle the situation head-on.
It’s no coincidence that I would have done the same. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Then everything.
It worked for Michael Morrison, or at least it looks as if it has. I just need to know what I want.