Many Many 'Things'

It is August 2015. The thirtieth series of long-running BBC medical drama, Casualty is about to kick off with a high drama double episode. I have heard on the Casualty grapevine, (a dark little corner of the Internet where we fans go to swap our Casualty-related conspiracy theories), that Charlie Fairhead -the only cast member to have weathered all thirty series- won’t make it out of this episode alive. I’m caught between devastation, because family aside, Charlie’s been the most constant male presence in my life since the mid-nineties, and a kind of Christmas Eve exhilaration which gets keener and sharper as the screening date approaches. There’s nothing I enjoy more than a Casualty season opener. The production team’s liable to blow the special effects budget on bombs and plane crashes and six car pile ups, so we’re left watching low-budget injuries for the rest of the season: minor sprains and ingrown toe nails, actors puking mouthfuls of canned vegetable soup in lieu of real vomit, seizures, (which are extremely cheap to recreate).

The email appears in my inbox about three hours before the first episode screens. “Could you write a thousand word article on thirty years of Charlie Fairhead? Could you file it with the local newspaper yesterday, or sooner if possible? Could you do all this for free?” Yes, I type back immediately. Yes, a hundred times, yes. I can do this. It would be my pleasure. It is unclear whether I’m being asked to write a live retrospective or Charlie’s obituary. But yes, yes, yes, I’m the very woman for the job. It doesn’t matter that I’m currently in the Netherlands. That I’m at a friend’s wedding. That I have no access to the BBC and will have to pull a few suspect manoeuvres in order to download the episodes in question. I will break the law. I will stay up all night writing. I will file my copy for zero payment. Because Casualty is, and always has been, one of my ‘things.’

It took me almost thirty five years to realise there’s a world of difference between a thing and a ‘thing.’ A thing is a noun; for example a chair or a spatula or a limited edition lino print. A ‘thing’ is an entirely different entity. A ‘thing’ can simultaneously present itself as noun, verb, adjective, personal, plural, past tense, present and umpteen other various states. If I were to hazard an attempt at a definition, I’d say a ‘thing’ falls somewhere between an obsession and an attribute. Which is to say, a ‘thing’ isn’t really something you acquire so much as develop, (think receding hairline rather than haircut). A ‘thing’ will usually creep up on you. It may take some time to establish itself. At the peak of its power, it will occupy a largish part of your attention, making significant impact upon your conversations, relationships, cupboard space and bank account. A ‘thing’ can prove almost impossible to get over and rather difficult to justify. Your ‘thing’ might not make sense to anyone else. Ultimately, it might not even make sense to you. (Reading this back, it sounds as if I’m describing religion. I wonder if having a ‘thing’ might be similar to being religious. Although religion itself could also be your ‘thing.’)

One of my ‘things’ is being a Protestant. I might’ve mentioned being Protestant once or twice, passingly in an interview. I did not, for a minute, envisage Protestantism would become one of my ‘things.’ As far as ‘things’ go, Protestantism lacks kerb appeal. It only attracts the sort of people who also have Protestantism as a ‘thing.’ But ‘things’ work similarly to labels. Other people make the association, then you’re stuck with your ‘thing’ for the foreseeable. You get to be the woman whose ‘thing’ is writing Protestants, or magic realism, or reading an abnormal number of books. Or you get to be the person whose ‘thing’ is sending tiny stories through the post, so that one day you’ll open the local newspaper and see your own face grinning back from beneath the headline, “return of the postcard lady.” You’ll hum this phrase to the tune of Return of the Mack, (though you have to squidge the words down to make them fit,) and wonder when postcards became your ‘thing.’

It’s not always easy to know when a passing interest has become a ‘thing.’ If you’re unsure as to the status of an interest, scroll through your inbox and social media accounts. Friends, family members and complete strangers will recognise your ‘thing’ long before you do. Unsolicited, they’ll begin sending you loosely related articles and ‘funny’ memes with tags like “made me think of you,” and, “have you seen this yet?” If you’ve been the recipient of twenty seven pieces of social media content related to yogurt or breeding llamas, you should probably assume that yogurt or breeding llamas is now widely perceived to be your ‘thing.’ If you’re still unsure as to what your ‘thing’ is, consider the presents you’ve recently received, giving particularly attention to stationery, socks and mugs. Gift-givers like nothing better than a friend with a ‘thing.’ You don’t intentionally go shopping for gifts if your friend has a ‘thing.’ You stumble upon the perfect item, (an Agatha Christie themed beanie, a tote bag baring the legend “blowin’ in the wind,” a set of signed postcards from the Casualty cast circa 2003). You buy the item regardless of the season and store it away until a birthday or Christmas presents the opportunity to wow your friend with an exceptionally on-brand gift. In short, we people with many ‘things’ are the easiest people to buy presents for.

 For the purpose of writing this article I made a quick tally of all my ‘things.’ They run from the obvious, (writing and being Northern Irish), to the slightly less obvious, (Agatha Christie, Dementia, Bob Dylan, BBC Medical dramas), to the downright niche, (plastic jewellery, Norway, Inspector Morse). With the exception of writing and possibly Dementia, I did not set out to acquire any of these ‘things.’ They crept up on me, occupying a larger and larger presence in my life until, one day I realised -or more often, someone else pointed out- that they’d become my ‘things.’ (I suspect stealth acquisition might also my modus operandi for making friends).

As a self-confessed juggler of too many ‘things’ I’m slowly learning how to differentiate between a ‘thing’ and a thing I was interested in for a few weeks. Less, has never come easy to me. Though I aspire to be a minimalist, I am, at heart, a crazy hoarder, reluctant to get rid of anything, (or any ‘thing’), in case it might prove useful next week/next month/in a decade or two. I seemed to manage my ‘things’ better as a child. I slipped from one obsession to another -Joan Aiken, football commentating, hamsters, Britpop- cleanly and neatly, nipping the previous ‘thing’ in the bud so I could give my complete attention to whatever demanded my attention next. Adult ‘things’ have proven more complex. People have awfully long memories. They remember that Bob Dylan was once my ‘thing,’ because I did a masters in him a decade ago. They insist that I’m still an expert, though under pressure I now struggle to remember whether it’s Highway 61 or 65 or 69, I’m revisiting and I could not say with any level of certainty which songs are actually on Desire or which year was the year of his motorbike crash. In an ideal world I’d be able to denounce my ‘things.’ The process would be similar to filing for divorce. I could post an announcement on social media. “To whom it may concern, Bob Dylan is no longer one of my ‘things.’ Please stop asking me to talk about him on your radio shows and festivsl panels because I haven’t got anything interesting to say. Happy to talk about Agatha Christie though.”

There’s knowing when a ‘thing’ has run its natural course and knowing when to put the foot down and insist, “that’s never going to be my ‘thing’.” A quick glance at my bookshelves (noting the plethora of niche subjects represented: Vampires, caravanning, liberation theology, vegan cookery), will suggest I struggle with both. I’m getting better. A few years back, having written a novel called The Fire Starters, I agreed to attend a Portuguese literary festival where the theme was fire. Sitting in the café of a waterpark, addressing (with the help of a translator), a group of people who’d lost relatives in a recent forest fire, I realised, albeit a little too late, that fire wasn’t one of my ‘things.’ I was not so quick to catch on with pipe organs. For a short period, about six years ago, my job required a certain level of responsibility for a Victorian pipe organ. I was briefly and quite irritatingly organ-obsessed, dragging my friends into churches  on holidays, sporting a ‘pipe organs are cool’ pin badge and joining chat rooms aimed at pipe organ enthusiasts. Perhaps pipe organs might’ve become a ‘thing’ if I hadn’t had a run in with RTE radio’s music show. On the day of recording, the actual pipe organist was caught in traffic and, in his absence, I thought I’d have a stab at explaining the history of pipe organs. I couldn’t. I shouldn’t have bothered trying. As I was comparing the internal workings of an organ to a set of giant recorders, I realised that pipe organs were not, and would never be, my thing. Shortly after, I gave my “pipe organs are cool” badge to a genuine devotee.

I honestly wish I could be more streamlined. I envy those people who know what their ‘thing’ is and can say with certainty and absolute focus, “my ‘thing’ is Emily Dickinson or vintage tractors or Hitchcock movies.” I worry that I’m flighty and accumulate ‘things’ because I’m easily bored. I worry that I’ll end up one of those writers like Michel Faber or Brian Moore; less well-read than they deserve to be, because they jumped from one genre and interest to the next; classic examples of people with too many ‘things.’ I worry that I’m going to collapse exhausted, from trying to keep up with all my ‘things.’ I worry because my bookshelves have already reached peak capacity and won’t be able to accommodate the addition of another ‘thing,’ so I’m actually, seriously considering, bookshelves in the bathroom.

I worry, but not enough to stop my mind from wandering every time I hear an interesting documentary on Radio 4. By this stage the thought process is disturbingly familiar. That sounds intriguing, I will think. I should read a book about that. I should read another book. Or maybe six. I should write an article/story/blog about this subject. I should profess my interest on social media