Freedom!
Paint your face blue, wear a kilt and yell that as loud as the pseudo-Scot Australian Gibson in that daft movie about the terrorist Wallace and you’ll get some idea of where I am now and have been for a few months.
Freedom means I can do what I like, when I like and with whom I like with no restraints or constraints. It’s great, come home from work via M&S Simply Food at the station, no need to cook, just grab a tray of fresh fruit salad and a couple of low-fat yoghurts from the shelf and that’s dinner sorted. Finally, I’m taking healthy options, not because I want to be healthy or feel I should be healthy but more because I can’t be arsed actually preparing food and take-aways are not much use when there’s only one of me to feed. Great stuff, lose more weight by dint of laziness – every dieter’s dream, superb. Apart from the fact that the consumption of white burgundy hasn’t ceased I’d be waif-like in weeks. Mind you, it hasn’t increased either which is A Good Thing.
Freedom means having no bounds. I can gadget out like a maniac. Out goes all the old-fashioned stuff and in comes all the new stuff. The TV is via a computer, the whole flat is a homage to Apple and before all the nay-sayers jump on this, it does, by-and-large, “just work” and has the benefit of looking pretty. Apple, sort of the Bang & Olufsen of the computer market.
Freedom means I don’t have to be sensible about anything – I can stay up as long as I want, watch whatever TV channel I feel like, at weekends I can lounge around in jeans and a t-shirt, not shave and not worry about keeping others entertained or accommodating their wish-lists. If I want, I can go to see any movie I like, I can have friends round at the drop of a hat, I can make eyes at any girl I choose to in any bar, restaurant, coffee shop or department store without fear of recrimination – sometimes they may even reciprocate.
Freedom means The Repressed Brit gets to behave as if he was 25 again (well mostly, obviously there are limits to capabilities at my age), Bar Italia at midnight, yep. The South Bank at sunset, yep. Design Museum a couple of times a month, yep. Ronnie Scott’s whenever, yep. Watching re-runs of QI at one in the morning, yep. Having a glass of wine with my fruit and yoghurt even on a “school night”, yes, most certainly! Having friends who happen to be female, yep.
Freedom means buying a cheap pushbike to meander through country lanes for fun rather than having to cycle because “it’s good for you”. Updating my camera kit so I can wander around taking, hopefully, “arty” cityscapes instead of snapshots. Hanging pictures wherever the hell I like, buying art without consultation. Jumping on a plane to wherever without consulting diaries. Who knows, I may even get to see places The Ex had been to before and thus wouldn’t return to.
Freedom means being able to get up at 6:30am, make a cup of coffee and sit on my balcony watching the sunrise without worrying about waking anybody up (the neighbours don’t count) or having to talk to anyone before the fourth cup has managed to kick the brain into gear. Playing music I haven’t heard for years because no-one is there to say, “I can’t stand that” and, of course, not having to listen to music I don’t like because someone else does. Being able to hire a cleaner because I don’t have a phobia about my stuff being moved 2mm from where I left it. Having ironed shirts because I have a cleaner (cf the laziness above!)
Freedom means seeing my boys more often and having them stay with me more easily – which in turn gets their Mum that bit of freedom so long denied to her. It means getting whichever train suits me. It means coming home to a flat with my stuff everywhere not just here and there. It means talking to my sis, going out or staying in as I wish, not waiting for anyone, not expecting anything or having demands made on me.
Freedom means many different things to many different people:-
It’s a very thin line between freedom and not wanting
To change who you are
For what they might want you to be – Ezio Lunedei
Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose – Kris Kristofferson & Fred Foster
