A House for Monsters

So I'm up to 3 GCSE tutees now. It is a steep learning curve as I work out what is really needed in this job to help a kid engage with school and the world around. It is certainly a lot more than schooling - in particular it is being a friend, someone they can trust, and someone who respects them and can offer them time. Achieve this and most of the battle has been won. I don't charge much money (my lifestyle doesn't require it) and at the end of the day that is so obviously not the point. As with nurses and other such professions the reward is simply the helping of another person - which isn't a job but in a normal world is our natural behaviour to our neighbour. Previous tutors it seems have taken teaching as a job: strict hours and pay. To twist an old saying: we should be too busy making the world a better place to earn any money! (The original is: most people are too busy working to earn any money).

The topic of housing has emerged again. A friend thinks that I should find "normal" accomodation now that I'm becoming professional once again. I know what she means. But at the same time isn't this madness. I am more than content with what I have, why should I upgrade? It will cost me a lot more, I will have to work harder and charge more and with more work on my plate I won't be able to deliver such a personal flexible service!

I wondered that the answer is monsters! If you heard of someone living in a garage what would be your immediate impression of them? It is "Stig of the Dump" territory. But, as is discovered by the child, Stig is actually a great friend and play mate. Yet isn't it ironic that it is children who are supposed to be afraid of monsters. Actually children don't see the monsterous in most things. It is the parents who would be afraid of Stig. It is the parents whose lives are haunted by monsters.

Just caught a play on Radio 4 yesterday about an old woman confessing her involvement in sadistic killings in her youth. Interesting but not that good, plus awfully didactic at the end as though we need a moral lesson here! But I take her point of understanding the sadist, something which the policeman and the play did nothing to do. I've recently analysed cruelty. But there is another side to all this: monsters. How many people are actually killed by sadistic murders in this country? The answer I imagine is incredibly low. Most general murders last year were committed by our soldiers, who probably received the largest count too. What we do get however is a hugely disproportionate representation in the media. Sadistic murders are top news items, big hits at the box office, and almost every drama these days is crime based. Regardless the reality, our minds are filled with monsters. Add to this the paedophile lurking in the woods and it is a wonder parents ever let kids out of their sights! But I bet the risks haven't actually increased at all: it is just parents being afraid of the dark, being afraid of the unknown.

Yet given this mythology of monsters in the unknown I can see that the idea of someone living in a garage may give people the wrong idea. It is like the old sea charts with "Er Be Monsters" stamped over all those unknown areas. Most people remain children and afraid of the dark all their lives. It would be a good training for children maybe (and a teacher did this to us on summer camp once) to get them to experience the outside world in the dark. I myself have lots of experience camping in remote places: and yes I do get spooked - I have never slept in a deralict house for fear of what has been left "behind"! But nature is a place I can trust and any spirits there I feel empathy for.

One thing that is very sad is a pattern that occurs with murders by monsters. Bodies are dumped in the wilderness. Maybe this is just logical, but it is more mythos I imagine. Out there is a huge teeth gnashing lizard. People who stray out of town are cut down and their remains are found in the wilderness. St George goes out into the unknown and slays the monster and the people are happy again. Not very different from modern police investigations. If the murderer seeks to hide the body why just leave it carelessly in bushes? If they want to be found just leave it in a street where children, for example, leave their knife victims? Whatever the reason in this particular mentality the problem is that nature gets tainted - it becomes "er be monsters". The same friend as above always warns me from walking down by the canal - in her imagination the canal is where bodies get dumped. I always remind her you are safer in a dark wood than in the city centre because ironically monsters are afraid of the dark.

In reality the whole world is our home. Nature, Wilderness, City, House are just names on maps. Some are considered safe, some are the theatres where our imagination conjures up "er be monsters". Is a garage really such a mysterious place where monsters really could live?

Which triggers another thought. When my sister told some of her friends about my residential escapades they took a while to digest it. Then one returned to her saying that he had travelled to India and South America to experience more of life, yet really it was here on his door step. I realised that too in Paris. Where I realised that what for me was a dazzling new place, it was just home to the Parisiens just as London was to me. The whole world it turns out and all its mystery are right here: it is just how we think about it that creates mystery or familiar. I imagine that is particular useful in a long term relationship where it is good to realise that the same old partner is at the same time a brand new exciting partner to someone else, and that exciting new flirt is the same as an old boring partner at the same time.

Having explored the great unknown of garage of living (and yes it was once a terra incognia for me also) I can report that it is exactly like any other kind of living. Slightly more exciting maybe, a lot cheaper and far less damaging to the environment (you could stick up a garage in a weekend, consider the labour, energy and materials of a house!): but otherwise, it is just living. I suppose by implication all terra incognia are the same.

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After a lovely walk this weekend I was brought to think of another aspect of "houses" which is slightly less lovely. Would you rather walk through forests alive with the musical chirping of a dozen bird species, filled in summer with countless colourful insects, the rare magical encounter with a secretive mammal peering from the undergrowth, the river winding through its flood plain - trout in summer plopping back after a run at a fly, the hazy view from a hillock pokeing through the tree canopy of the wide landscape of fields, hedges and forest: maybe the settle down for the afternoon with a piknik and let nature unwind around you. Or, would you rather head into a maze of streets bordered on all sides by scowling property owners ready at every step to remind you it is their land and you are not allowed onto it. Confined to the hard concrete pathway with noisy cars belching smoke to one side and litter bins to the other the only place to go is the high street and shopping - where you may buy a DVD on the English countryside - or back home to your own small square of turf to inturn scowl at trespassers?

OK so I write it with a clear agenda ;-) But there are truths beneath this passage. Do we really chose to live in cities or is it just convenient and really at heart we do appreciate the natural habitat? If it is the latter we are in danger of deleting the natural in favour of what we only find convenient!