Here's to serendipity

How often do you follow impulse? I don’t mean a "If that guy sniffs that way one more time I’m going to deck him", desperate ‘I just can’t take it anymore!’ impulse. Or even a bargain-hunting "What?! 100 kilos of dolphin-friendly flaked tuna for £9.99!" impulse. These are the kind that may possibly wind you up in front of a jury, in jail, or drowning in a lifetime’s supply of tuna-mayo-sweetcorn sandwiches. Rather, I mean the "I wonder where that walkway goes?" or "What do I really feel like doing now?" impulse. The sort of unplanned moment where serendipity can sneak in by the side-door and surprise you with a bouquet of flowers, a foot massage, and an offer to take your grandparents out for tea and scones.

This isn’t for the faint of heart. Are you a meticulous planner, who knows the times of the local trains down to the minute? Do you know what you’re doing to the day weeks, no months, in advance? Does an inexplicable twitchiness take hold if an unexpected event throws up the potential of deviating from your beautifully drawn out itinerary? If so, you may want to look away now.

The above character sketch is alien to me. I have tried to be that person. Jokes about being a commitmentphobe aside, there’s something about always knowing what I’m going to be doing at any given time – and not being able to be flexible around that timetable – that makes me a little nervous. I’m not incapable of doing it; I’ll take on the role of planner and organiser if I must, and I’m happy to get out the diary to pencil in a dinner with friends. But I’ll need a little room to manoeuvre, the ability to tinker with the plans last minute, the flexibility for us to choose where we’re going on the day, rather than in advance.

This isn’t to say I’m an untrustworthy person, who’ll bail on you last minute on a whim. Let me elaborate: I think there’s an intimate connection between not being wedded to intricate plans, having an innate curiosity about the world around you, embracing impulse, and serendipity.

An illustrative story for you:

A good university friend of mine came to stay with me in London over Easter weekend. She’s from Warrington, is currently living and working in Berlin, has been to London a few times but hasn’t ever really ‘done’ the city as a camera-carrying tourist. I’d come up with a rough plan of which sights we could see, as we have similar interests. But we agreed we’d simply see which way the wind (and the rain) blew us on the day.

Bar a lie on the Sunday morning (bed… so… very… comfortable...) we got off to a good start with the Tube down to Westminster to gawp at the Houses of Parliament. On the cards next was a wander down South Bank, back over to St Paul’s Cathedral and then a Thames Clipper down to North Greenwich to see The O2 (formerly known as The Millennium Dome), before jumping on the Tube back home.

We may not have completely stuck to my finger-in-the-air plan. In turns out much of the day was influenced by my complete inability to locate places I’ve been to before, as well as my friend's craving for Nando’s. By way of justification for the latter, apparently there’s only one in the whole of Berlin; she was suffering withdrawal symptoms. There was also the crushing realisation that our mid-20’s joints can apparently no longer walk for more than three hours at a time. All was not lost however. It meant she also got to see the buildings around Whitehall, for a start. I rediscovered a beautiful, enchanted part of St James’ Park I stumbled upon over a year ago but hadn’t been able to relocate. Buckingham Palace also made an appearance (driven by the Nando’s urge, not my broken compass), as did Trafalgar Square. Even more unexpectedly, we found ourselves listening to the choir boys in Westminster Abbey during an Easter Sunday service. As well as lots of other lovely discoveries in between.

I hadn’t planned to do anything of these things. But they added to what turned out to be a lovely, relaxing day of sightseeing, minus the calls we’ll be making to our doctors requesting hip-replacements. All stemmed from a militaristic about-turn halfway down Westminster Bridge in order to hunt down the nearest Nando’s, and both of us then listening to our ‘I wonder what’s through there?’ impulse.

One of the things I'm seeking to capture in my rambling monologues is this very attitude – following the twists and turns of a city, as well as embracing feelings of impulse and curiosity. Cities are made for exploration, to be walked, made for discovery. One of the many things I love about London is the way its history is pinned proudly to its sleeve, forcing its way into your consciousness every step of the way. Another facet of my love affair with the city is that it’s grown organically throughout that history. Paradoxically, the result is a beautiful patchwork of architecture, culture and experiences lying in wait to be uncovered by the curious flaneur.

So many times over the last year I’ve almost ignored that twinge of "Ooooh I wonder what’s down there?" or "That sounds like it could be good" whilst out and about. Almost ignored. I’ve not yet been disappointed when I’ve listened to that childlike questioning in my head that wants to explore anything and everything. Like Alice heading down the rabbit hole, saying to herself "curiouser and curiouser", if a hidden walkway between shops looks promising, I’ll duck into it (note I said "promising" and not "dark, mysterious and foreboding". Safety first folks.) If I see a sign to an exhibition that sounds interesting I’ll do my best to check it out there and then or, if I’m unable to, I’ll go back to it when I can.  If a busker is playing music I like the sound of, I’ll try and sit a little to listen. Back to my ‘Headphones out, boys' post, I once managed to get the contact details of a book publisher for a friend after switching my music off on a whim. Nothing may come of following the impulse, but then what have you got to lose?

There’s so much that can come out of seeing the world in this way, outside of wandering a city. Some of the best photographs, for example, have been taken on impulse rather than planned. The Internet works on this philosophy, that you discover content you didn’t know you were looking for until you stumble upon it, after following a desire line of hyperlinks. Much like the other thread that runs through this blog – finding happiness in small things – I’m hoping to share more of my discoveries through the little stories I post here.  For now, I'll just say that if you embrace distraction and impulse – if you listen to the Alice in your head that wants to head down the rabbit hole – then who knows what you may find, what you may learn, what you may discover. You may well be pleasantly surprised by the serendipity that greets you when you reach the bottom.

A few photos from our lost but found Sunday

Looking out from the little cottage in St James' Park, rediscovered

Next to the rediscovered part of St James' Park

Curvature in buildings, something you see all around London 

Cutting through Whitehall Gardens

A patchwork of building styles in the Dean's Yard of Westminster Abbey

Choirboys running after finishing their choiring in Westminster Abbey

A grave laid in Westminster Abbey in 1082

A different view of the Houses of Parliament after cutting through another garden

The view after a detour over Lambeth Bridge, whilst hunting down a Thames Clipper

Allow me a moment of indulgence...

I have a confession to make: the unadulterated joy I get from a fresh ink cartridge in a fountain pen.

In fact, not only a fresh ink cartridge in a fountain pen, but also using that fountain pen in a notebook with ridiculously flamboyant binding and thin-ruled lines (always thin-ruled. Never, ever wide-ruled).

Oh yes ladies and gents, after the previous thoughtful blogpost about not isolating yourself from the world around you by sticking your headphones in, this one is about the highly important and newsworthy topic of pens and notebooks. But then again, this is a blog about embracing the small pleasures in life, so bear with me.

I can try to describe exactly what this fascination with ink and paper is, but the words won't do it justice — either you get it or you don't. A bit like hereditary baldness.

And you know who you are if you're a member of this depraved club, and we have the ability to identify ourselves to each other with nought more than a loving sidewards glance towards and the stroke of a desired notebook. Do you guiltily have a drawer full of unused notebooks, that you convinced yourself you'd find a use for whilst handing over your money? Or perhaps they're hidden on your shelves in amongst your paperbacks. Or stacked in a corner of your room somewhere. Do you find yourself unconsciously gravitating towards the stationery section of a book shop, or The Pen Shop? Do you die a little inside if left with no other option than to use a pen that doesn't quite feel right? Or if the ink bleeds like a spider's web along the paper? If the first page of a virgin notebook doesn't look perfect once you've finally started writing, do you carefully rip it from the seams so you can start again? (I've ingeniously solved this eternal dilemma by leaving the problematic first page blank, and therefore unsullied). If the answer is a whispered, wide-eyed 'yes' to any of these questions, then I hate to break it to you but you're one of us. Embrace it. Admit it. Nurture it.

I'm not someone who rails against the lost art of handwriting, who refuses to go anywhere near a computer and laments the (exaggerated) reports of the death of the paperback. I've been known to lovingly paw my iPhone, I unashamedly adore my Kindle and I'm the first to admit my handwriting is ludicrously minuscule, becoming entirely illegible even to me if anything but the greatest care is taken whilst writing.

But there's something deeply, deeply satisfying about turning through the pages of a notebook or sketchbook that's been carefully inscribed with someone's handwriting using black ink (and again, always black. Never, ever blue. At a push then maybe sepia, but only if the colour of the paper is a complementary cream). It's as though the content is an irrelevant by-product of the form; it could be a catalogue of someone's sock collection or an original manuscript of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland for all I care.

Maybe it's the inescapable link with the person whose handwriting fills the pages. If you're someone who loves notebooks and pens, then you'll know that feeling of looking back over what you've written and feeling undoubtedly and inescapably that it's you on those pages. When reading something that someone else has handwritten it's just so very personal — the unique tics in their scrawl, the particular way they loop their g's, whether it's neatly and painstakingly drawn out or scribbled as though they couldn't get it down quick enough. It's that same feeling you get when you come across a 15th century text in a museum; the feeling that the person who made the marks on the paper is there in the room with you, looking over your shoulder. It's something that you inevitably lose through typed words printed out onto A4 sheets of white paper or seen on a screen.

And this isn't a phenomenon reserved solely for women, nor a particular generation. I've had long conversations with various gentlemen about fountain pens, comparing nib sizes (bigger isn't always necessarily better folks) and I know of a young man, who shall rename nameless, who has recently bought at least two notebooks after squealing joyously at the look and colour of their bindings (you, yes you. You know who you are). With no hesitation I can think of at least seven people that I've had in-depth conversations with about the joys of notebooks and pens.

And so I make no apologies for this purely self-indulgent musing, and I leave you with two things. The first is a brilliant quote from the novel One Day by David Nicholls:

"She drinks pints of coffee and writes little observations and ideas for stories with her best fountain pen on the linen-white pages of expensive notebooks. Sometimes, when it's going badly, she wonders if what she believes to be love of the written word is really just a fetish for stationery. The true writer, the born writer, will scribble words on scraps of litter, the back of bus tickets, on the wall of the cell. Emma is lost on anything other less than 120gsm."

And the second is a photo of a page from one of my notebooks. *satisfied sigh*