This morning I feel remarkably light and carefree as I take the escalator up from the station platform at St Pancras. My feeling is correct. I am indeed light. Because I am now minus the bag containing my lap top (the trusty back-up Dell) and all my work stuff, which is still on the train and heading for Brighton. Unbelievable.
A horrible sweaty moment of realisation, and a sprint to the information desk, where I beg the man to ring ahead a couple of stops and see if my bag can be retrieved. He obliges pessimistically, and I spend ten minutes alternately laughing and fretting, until a call comes through. Against considerable odds a guard has actually managed to locate my bag and rescue it in the scant minute that the train stops at City Thameslink. Unbelievably lucky. The detour to pick it up means I'm running late, but it could have been so, so much worse.
Meet Andrew at King's Place (art, space, squashy sofas, coffee), and update him on the litany of my recent klutzdom. The ruined laptop, the bag caught in the train doors, the mangled sat nav update, and now abandoning my stuff on the train. Andrew, who is a clinical psychotherapist, laughs, looks at me owlishly through his glasses, suggests that my subconscious may be 'acting out' and asks when I last had a holiday.
I'd not even thought of it like that. I'd gone for the obvious external causes (spell/juju/hex/voodoo/curse etc etc). Not considered that I could be doing this to myself DELIBERATELY. If it IS me, then I'd like to politely request that in future I just write myself a note, rather than laying this trail of oblique, stressful and very expensive clues.
A job in an achingly hip Brick Lane media node. The receptionist is in her early twenties and has dyed her hair grey with a hint of blue. It looks good, a textural contrast to her glowing youthful face. Nan cool. I suspect there's a real chance that here my Dell might be seen as ironic and cutting edge.
It's had a good swan song. Missed, chased, recovered, valued. And now, possibly, fashionable.
"When I was seventeen, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past thirty-three years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something." - Steve Jobs
