Who knows how my life has changed as a result of my decision to come back home rather than sleep in the Travelodge at the Trowell services? Someone should do a film about it. In one Universe I woke up in Harpenden at 1.30pm and in another I woke up in a snot-smeared room in Nottinghamshire. Neither reality would be particularly interesting, but they would be different. I mean I would probably have got back to Harpenden at about the same time I woke up and I would still have traveled in to London and gone out for dinner at a friend's. But enough variables would have altered in order for my life to turn out slightly or significantly differently.
Massive life changing things might have occurred by this split second decision as I drove down the M1. What if I had stayed at the services and then in the morning in Costa coffee fallen in love with a stranger who I would otherwise never have met? What if after deciding to go home I fell into the arms of my beautiful fiancee who I love more than anyone in the world (apart from the stranger that I will now never meet) and made sweet (or other) love and impregnated her (ignore the previous entry which showed I got drunk and fell asleep anyway) then a new life would have resulted in this coin flip?
But even the tiny things that happened in the path I chose than the one I passed over would account for enough differences to my life and the lives of the people I had encountered to change history.
This is why Sliding Doors is such a shit film. Everything we do has massive consequences on everything else, but all that it means is some different shit happens.
Yet today I couldn't help wonder how that other me (Me2) who stayed in the Travelodge and who didn't have a hangover would have been getting on. If he had had his way than I reckon my whole life would have turned out much better than it's going to and any setback I suffer from now on I will blame on my foolish decision to go home. I am so jealous of the other Richard Herring, eating his breakfast panini, that I am hoping that in his Universe his decision not to risk the drive home meant he ended up in a terrible accident this morning that killed or maimed him. That'll teach him for getting everything right. Oh he was so cocky, with his cushylife mapped out in front of him, but it turned out that coming home and getting drunk was actually the best thing to do after all. How do you like those sky potatoes, Me 2, you dead/maimed idiot?
Talking of such duality, the latest frame of Me 1 vs Me 2 snooker is now
available at the British Comedy Guide
or iTunes. It was one I did after another long drive home and I think it's safe to say the alternate universe where I didn't bother is slightly less boring, but have a listen anyway. Orange Mark emailed me in a bit of a panic this morning, saying the file had been corrupted (I sent it to him a couple of weeks ago) and I was worried I'd deleted the original, but luckily/unluckily it was all still on my Tascam. Still it would be fitting if Referee 1's plaintive lament from beyond the grave had ended up genuinely lost forever. That would be true art. The cry in the darkness that no one hears. It's my ultimate aim for this podcast, but alas so far its popularity continues at the same lowish level, its listeners determined to beat me in this staring contest (though it has less point than a staring contest).
We briefly visited our London home, which meant I could email the podcast on (the new flat still has no broadband - it's like living in the 17th Century). More smashing and digging has occurred. Disappearing internal walls reveal large new spaces. It's dead exciting.
Dinner was fun and we got the train home a little bit drunker than I had been last night. But come on, it's my night off. We debated whether to pay for our train tickets and for once in my life I decided to do the honest thing and pay for them, even though the barriers were open. It cost £25.
Annoyingly no one checked our tickets. We could have had a free ride home and I could have put that money towards not staying in a Travelodge.
My shoulder was aching a bit as our new mattress is quite hard and I'd slept on it badly. That's another thing that the Travelodge Richard Herring didn't have to endure. Lucky bastard.
