Routine:

“Routine, in an intelligent man is a sign of ambition”

-        WH Auden

I’ve been doing a lot of gardening recently.  Regardless of the weather, myself and Mrs McCready don our scruff, sort through the garden tools and get down and dirty with the Martian soil; in both front and back gardens.  Whether this is under Devonian sunshine, or Dartmoor drizzle; there is a need, an urge to get another portion of the Stakanhovite labour done.

 

It’s weird that something that involves such hard work, the occasional cross word and the consumption of tea in a tin mug has become part of our routine. Everyone on this earth, from Donald Trump to the person you’ve just passed in the street has them.  Routines can become a prison, a cage of bones that bind the soul.  Or: they can become the place you fly from, the place you can come back to and know its home.

Before I left the wonderful world of full time employment, I had routines.  Music, as you know, was a way of protecting me from harm.  However, I did need a long walk.  When I lived in South Liverpool, this was generally across Sefton Park, avoiding lines of schoolkids, in the general direction of the bus route.  Taking in air from green trees and budding, flowered, herbal dreams of students in their bedsits.

When I lived in Birkenhead, it was a straight line.  Away from the bus station, but still taking a linear direction.  I was limited by the river, but that little hint of green air from Central Park and Georgian architecture was enough to set me up for another dose of grim reality.  Sometimes.

 

My routine now is different.  If I’m writing, I have to be sitting at the living room table.  The notes have to be done in pen, in a notebook my sister-in-law bought me.  I listen to some BBC 6Music I’ve downloaded, generally Guy Garvey.  Occasionally, I’ll gaze out of the window. A Nespresso will be made, at about 300-350wds mark. That little kick of caffeine is generally good enough, strong enough to get me to the misty, magical heights of 700-900wds. I’m sure George Clooney would be proud of me.

Occasionally, I’ll buy into other people’s routines.  Sometimes, when my son is distracted (this doesn’t take much) I’ll go on his X-Box.  I’ll generally play an old copy of FIFA.  I’ll play as Liverpool and I’m getting back to where I was a decade ago.  Last result: 3-1 against Watford, coming back from a goal down at half time.  (Henderson, Can, Lallana).  That’s his routine: he gets itchy if he doesn’t go on the X-Box every couple of days.  I don’t, it’s something I can dip into every now and then.

See also: kissing my wife first thing, then getting up to make her a cup of tea.  I’ll generally potter – breakfast, radio, write my journal, get my thoughts clear as the day begins.  In this way, I’ve become part of my routine, she’s become part of mine. 

So: routines are something that is as much lethal as lovely.  They are something you can bounce off; or stop the soul from functioning. As a writer, routine is like spinach for Popeye.  It should be somewhere between Stephen King (six ‘good’ pages) and Jack London (six hours on Whisky). I know my routine, but I’m not going to buy a set of Brian Eno Oblique Strategies Cards.  Possibly.

As a human being, it is essential you filter through your day.  Be judicious, use the finest toothcomb.  What are you doing, who has become routine? What can you live without? Who can you do without? Life is as much a marvellous process as it is a mundane one. 

Perhaps at the end of the day, it’s all just a question of breathing.  Something that has become part of my day, since I moved to Devon.  As the sun is going down, I sit on the seat at the end of the garden.  I look down the verge of our garden, past the fruit trees we’ve just planted and into the valley.  If I smoked, in either sense of the word… I would be lighting up. I’m accepting the end of one day; as much as accepting another.  I breathe, ignore social media for a few moments and let the light dance across the fields. 

If this is routine, this is what it should be.  Essential, enlivening, comforting.  If it isn’t, kick it to the curb, the very edge of the peripheral. Some things you can live with, some you can live without.

Take a breath, ask yourself: is this routine?