Magic Carpet Ride

When I was a tiny girl I used to imagine that the purpose of an aeroplane ride was to take me and my family up in the air long enough for God to roll up England like a carpet and then unroll the country that we were going to next in the same location. I didn’t think the plane actually went anywhere, it was just the backdrop and the extras that were changed while I ate my airline meal and listened to the inflight entertainment. The replacement carpets selected for us were invariably hot, smelly and confusing, required many painful innoculations and contained terrifyingly large, hungry insects.  I wasn’t very keen on them. Why couldn’t we just go to Majorca like everyone else? Or Butlins? That sounded like so much more fun than,say, Somalia..

I did not share my carpet theory with my parents.

I was afraid they would laugh at me.

Not because it was infeasible to curl up a country like a swiss roll, that part was perfectly reasonable, but the mere mention of a deity would cause dangerous equine eye rolling and mind-numbingly long lectures in superior tones about religion being a crutch, a menace to the progress of the worker’s society, illogical, captain, blah blah woof woof moooo zzzzz.

You know, I didn’t really have any serious notions about God beyond what I had heard at school (yes, we had God at school back then!), but someone had to roll up those carpets, dammit, and I had not been given a concrete picture of Science – no mention of her outfit, for instance – and  all the revered figures in the household seemed to be dead (Marx – dead. Trotsky – dead. Mandela, well not dead, but he was pretty much stuck in prison on an island back then with bleak prospects). So it had to be God and he wore a dusty old black suit and he had a watch fob and let me tell you he was kind of grumpy. I was glad to be up in the plane while the big ol’ changover happened and I didn’t particularly want to greet him when I came down.

So as far as I am concerned, while I’m running around rural Kenya picking off bleeding pieces of my acutely sunburned nose (can you say skin cancer?) the goode people of Englande have been temporarily mothballed. It came as a huge surprise to me when I returned to find that they had actually continued their lives and didn’t miss me at all.

How could this be?

This was my first inkling that the world was larger than I had previously thought and my rug hypothesis might be faulty.  I was unsure as to whether I should be comforted or depressed.

 

Here is a scientific breakdown of my dilemma in the kind of chart favoured by Husband:

 

					Center of Universe + Uncomfortable evidence that needs to be suppressed by subconscious.
	Camaraderie + Accept existence of others		vs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was quite a lonely child, but I had a rich inner life.

 

Now I do need to point out that I have mellowed considerably with age. I am far more willing to accept the existence of others as long as I like them. (If I don’t like them I need a new post and they need to run away because I have been known to make grown men cry, quite recently, and I don’t mean Husband who would be an easy win.) 

So now we tip the scales in favour of the former and my subconscious gets a much needed break because I think it’s a bit overloaded after all the years it’s been pressed into service with various traumas (also see future posts on a slow day).

I was reflecting this afternoon as I wandered (lonely as a cloud..) across the globe via the blogosphere that it is no longer necessary to get on a plane to be reminded that one is but a tiny drop in the seething stew of human drama.

 Blogging abounds – there are literally millions on every subject and at every level from the superbly crafted to the barely literate. Everyone is there telling you who they are and what they want/like/feel.

And even what they don’t tell you is so very telling, isn’t it?

Like me. Who the hell am I anyway? Why won’t I tell you my real name?

Is it to protect the innocent?

Or the guilty?

And which one am I?

I note that when I think my most gleefully uncharitable thoughts I actually enjoy my own company most and it is  faintly astonishing to me that nobody else in real time seems to feel the same way. 

And you, you who have actually read this far, O loyal one.
Does it make you feel comforted or depressed that there is someone out there thinking the same things as you?
Or if nobody thinks the same things as you do you feel triumphant or just like a giant freak?