The Temptation Ticket

Have you ever seen a ghost? Ever had an echo or shade make you an offer it thought you couldn’t refuse?

That happened to me today.

Now, before you all switch off your computers in disgust at my clearly having lost the plot, let me reassure you that I’m not about to go all Twilight Zone and weird on you all. You should know enough about me by now to know that I’m faaaaar too egotistical to let the ghost of anyone else into this blog. This is the ghost of me from a couple of months ago, when I bought my train ticket for today’s UberCommute.

Back then, I was still having occasional treats, most specifically including trips to the last remaining Cranberry store in London for bagfulls – often literally bagfulls – of fruit and nuts. More than occasionally, some of those fruits and nuts would be coated in chocolate or yoghurt, Cranberry offering these kinds of temptations right alongside its technically more healthy options (what is with that, by the way? Are you a sweet shop or a health food store? The same is true of Graze boxes, I’ve noticed: it’s a philosophical conundrum every time you go in or order one – which you are you today, the healthy one or the treat-having one?). These Cranberry trips, as I’ve mentioned before, involve a significant detour on these never-ending Mondays. There used to be a store there at Paddington station, which is how I first got started on the whole Cranberry choco-nut madness – to slightly misquote Hannibal Lecter, “how do we begin to crave? We crave what we see…”

Now though, only the one store remains, at Hammersmith, which for me involves getting a daily travelcard once I get to London, and taking a tube detour from Paddington to Hammersmith, and then a bus up to my office – or likewise at the end of the day, getting a bus from the office to Hammersmith, then taking a tube ride back to Paddington. The effort of this is of course significant, because for a while there, the Cranberry trips were a kind of surrogate addiction, a feeding of the need for treats, rather than specifically for the product I’d pick up there and consume usually on the way home from the UberCommute. Oddly enough, these trips never seems to adversely affect my Tuesday weigh-ins, which added to the sense of the “freebie treat” and even – despite their frequent chocolate-covered nature – the healthy treat.

All of which is by way of explaining that when you book train tickets, they give you the option of building a travelcard in to the cross-country ticket, and whenever it was that I booked today’s ticket, I had clearly thought that a Cranberryfest was on the cards, because I booked the travelcard option.

I hadn’t considered the option of going for a Cranberryfest today…until I discovered the travelcard ticket last night. I’m in a different headspace now, and I don’t need to give myself treats nearly as often as I did back when I booked the ticket. The stone of mostly-water I’ve lost in recent weeks has been a seriously good incentive to very specifically not do this.

All the same, I had the ticket that would make it easy. Those without an addictive personality will forever be mystified at how persuasive such a circumstantial element can be. “Well, I’ve got the ticket” is akin to “Well, I’ve opened the wrapper” to those of us not accustomed to control over our own urges. It’s almost like the universe giving us a nod and a wink and saying “Go onnnnnn…you might as well now, I’ve cleared the obstacles out of your way…” – even though in this case I know it wasn’t the universe, it was an earlier version of me, planning ahead.

And last night I seriously considered it, even though I didn’t particularly want the product. The scarcity of opportunity to visit this particular shop egged me on. “It’s the only time you’ll have a chance this month,” I thought. “And you’ll regret it if you come home without having been there…”

These are the demons of Habit. And I am, whatever else I may be, a creature in appalling thrall to Habit. The issue – to go or not to go – was still in doubt while I slept. Then I woke up this morning at 6AM (notably, the first morning in a couple of weeks where I actually thought “Ah, sod it, I’m not getting up yet, I’ll walk later…” – and then remembered), and the question had resolved itself in my brain.

“Just because you have the opportunity, doesn’t mean you have to take it”. The words battered me upside the head with a simplicity that seemed deceitful somehow. Which is why I’m writing this blog on the train to Cardiff – to put it out there, so that you’ll know, and I’ll feel like a heel if I should crumble and obey Habit over desire as the day rolls on. I don’t need to do this. I really don’t.