Groundhog Day or Freedom?

Far from this being a whining diatribe on my life, life, your life, life in general – this actually quite a joyous kind of commentary.

For those of you who have not heard of Groundhog Day – it’s not so much what is celebrated in the US on the 2nd of February but the film starring Bill Murray. In short the film is about a news presenter’s life, where he goes off to report this festival. He hates it. But then he starts to realise each time he wakes up, he can’t get away from that day, no matter what he does, he wakes up to the 2nd of February all over again and can’t escape it until he sorts his life out and breaks out of the routine of life.

And so, describing your life as being like Groundhog Day is like life becoming one illegible blur, one where you can’t really pick out what you’ve done and certainly one where you are trapped in routine, no longer free maybe.

Groundhog Day is one of my favourite films of all time and along with American Beauty probably are my adages to which I try and live my life by; although saying it like that sounds much more grandiose than that mantra sounds!

So what brought this on. Well my drive home from the Christmas/New Year period last Sunday. Nothing out of the ordinary happened, it just underlined things and I thought I’d share it.

I guess it’s very easy to get trapped in your routines, your religiously followed through actions. I mean, what else is there in life, you go to work, 5 days a week, solve the similar kind of problems month to month or do the same kind of work, come home, cook, watch telly, go to bed and start again. At the weekend you get a little chance at breaking out of the mould.

I try to do that as you might gather through my various antics here and there, mostly involved around my walking and kind of doing things because they seem like a good idea.

Driving home, I had the obvious route back of the motorway once I had dropped my brother off in Bristol, or perhaps a slightly less odd route from Bath straight down the A36 to Southampton and along the coast. I have plenty of fond memories of wonderful summer evenings of driving along the A4 so decided to go along the A4, down the A34 (bit boring) then the A272 behind the downs, diving off through Fittleworth (down to a winding B road), on to an unclassified road over Greatham Bridge before ending up back on an A road (the 283) to Storrington and on to the A24 before getting back to Worthing.

This was a bit of a longer route mostly due to the A4. But what the heck. Not like I had to be back at a certain time. Not like anything was stopping me going that way except myself. Yes perhaps the most logical route was the M4, M25, M23 but that sucks. Boring. Foot down and 200 miles later oh whoops I’m in Worthing – now what happened back there on the motorway, hmm it’s all blurred into one and I can’t remember.

At least the way I went back was scenic, though I didn’t see much after a certain point as it got dark. But I did see Bath again which was nice around the central bit I often miss out on when I use the A36. And I saw a very ugly cutting through the hillside on the other side of Bath for the A46 and A4, nasty business. Another Twyford like decimation. Saddening

I also saw the Christmas lights at Chippenham and Marlborough which were dead pretty. At Chippenham they even had them on the bypass around the town strung between the lamp posts, now that was unusual for a country so obsessed with always always cutting costs, driving things down, scrimping and cutting everything back to the bone (and then wondering why everything is crap…)

In the daylight I would have been able to perhaps detour more to Avebury. I guess the good thing about the A4 (well the bit that doesn’t strangle West London this is) is that it is the old main road to the West and it’s a nice wide single carriageway road, you can do 60mph on it where allowed and its a good fun drive. At such a quiet period (and the A4 once out of Bath through to Newbury usually is since it was ‘replaced’ by the M4 by the early 1970s) it’s just lovely, peaceful in a way. And even though it was dark, it didn’t matter.

It feels good to do things that logically don’t make much sense or break away from the mould. Kind of shows you that life doesn’t have to be tedium once you grow up and have to pay bills. It’s down to you in many ways.

That said, my car is utterly filthy now

But here’s to being free!