Audience of One

S is for Spontaneous

Events often take a lot of planning. Making sure people are able to come well in advance so everyone you’re inviting can make it. Deciding on a menu in advance so you can be sure you have the right ingredients and know how to make it. Organising a guest list so that you have a variety of different people whose personalities complement rather than clash.

So when I decided one afternoon that I was going to have a dinner party the next evening, I had many things to think about at very short notice. This is what comes of being spontaneous.

The process of thought goes something like this:

1. Realise it’d be nice to do something at some point (like have some friends round for a meal).
2. Realise that there’s almost nothing stopping me from doing it quite soon (like having the meal in the next week).
3. Decide to do it (it’s tomorrow!).
4. Realise, once it’s too late, that spontaneity creates quite a few problems. (Like guests not all being able to turn up at such short notice just after all the food has been bought.)
5. Attempt to solve problems. (Call up other friends half an hour before the meal just in case they can make it.)
6. If problems overcomable, bask in knowledge that spontaneity has created an event not easily repeatable. (The four guests, though there’ve been last minute changes, get on very well.) If problems unsolvable, hide for a few days before another scheme occurs. (I can just imagine what would have happened if only two people could have made it, and subsequently got food poisoning, leaving me with large amounts of leftovers.)

On Wednesday I was cycling home from work when I got a text message sent a few hours before – “I’m going to London to stay over at Martin’s new flat, do you want to come?” If I was to go it would mean getting home, getting changed, and leaving pretty much straight away. I texted back saying “sure!” I had four hours sleep on Martin’s wooden floor (the two girls got the bed in the next room) before leaving with one of Martin’s pilot friends in the morning. Shooting down the motorway at ninety-five miles an hour a couple of hours later (there’s something in pilots that makes them think seventy miles an hour is far too slow), I reflected on whether what I’d done had been sensible.

The conclusion I came to was this: if I’d stopped and thought about whether the trip had been sensible, or indeed enquired about the sleeping facilities, I wouldn’t have gone – and I would have missed out. Spontaneity can be stupid, but sometimes it can give you experiences that you never would have had otherwise. The evening, however exhausted I came out of it, was fantastic. Jokes were made, laughs were had, food was eaten and (some) sleep was had, eventually. (The girls decided at midnight to watch American Pie in the room I wanted to sleep in.)

Somehow, my spontaneous decisions have just enough thought in them to come out alright – the dinner party being a brilliant example. As a result of that night, I’ve started a regular meeting of friends which should keep me sane in the coming weeks when all my friends are off at uni. Impulse buying is another matter however. (Two weeks or so after leaving school, I bought three A level text books because I wished I’d done those subjects for the past two years. I’ve opened one of them since and got stuck ten pages in.)

One of the questions I was asked at my recent interview (for the camera shop) was: “If your friends had to describe you in three words, what words would they be?” The first word that came to mind was “spontaneous”. Those of you who’ve seen a lot of me in recent years – would you have picked that word?

Matthew @ 14:46, September 24, 2005 to ABC | Comments (5)