The Back Front Door

d and I have a disagreement. 

It’s not a world-shaking, hair-pulling thing, but it’s most distinctly a disagreement.

We disagree about where the front and back of things are.

I know, you wouldn’t think such a thing was susceptible to debate, would you, but I promise you it is. In particular, we disagree about what constitutes the front and back of our flat.

d, for her part, maintains that the flat “faces forward”, which means it faces the River Taff, so the wall of our living room which overlooks that waterway is the “front wall”.

I, for my part, and with what is probably a male dose of linear thinking, insist that the “front wall” is the one in we find the front door. I am strengthened in my position by the fact that, as our place is a flat, it has no back door. I would boldly claim it has no back door because if it did, it would drop us from the first floor onto the road alongside the Taff.

Has there been a shifting, a softening, a movement of either of our positions on this question today?
There has, as far as I’m aware, not.

I mention this because today the confusion has played a part in my day.

In Nottingham, I was in a conference on self-driving cars all day (annnnnnnnd why not? I support anything that threatens to put Jeremy Clarkson out of business). At lunchtime, I was due to ride around a bit of Nottingham in one of them. The conference was held in an ultra-modern building that looked as though it had been constructed of all the Lego bricks left over after you’ve made what you really wanted to make. It had a front entrance, and a back entrance. They looked almost identical. At lunchtime I duly went to the closest exit, and waited a while for my turn in the Knight Rider dream-fulfiller. The car never turned up, and eventually, later in the afternoon, I learned that it had been at the other entrance waiting for me.

Having a tight turnaround to get the last train out of Nottingham that would get me home tonight, I pre-booked a cab to take me from Legoland to the train station. Having learned from my lunchtime humiliation, I went to the other entrance to wait for it. I noted with grim satisfaction that it plainly said it was the “Main Entrance” – in other words, the one with the front door in it (I’m not sayin’…I’m just sayin’…)

Then I had a text from the taxi firm, saying my cab was waiting for me. I blinked. It wasn’t.

“Sonofabitch rotatable buildings,” I muttered, heading towards the “automatic doors”. I smashed my nose into the glass.

“Bastard!” I said. A cursory examination proved that the doors were only automatic if you had a code-key to get in – or were coming from the inside, out. “Stupid, inside-out, back-to-front bastards!”

Fortunately, some academic types were heading home from a hard day’s brainwork, and the doors popped open, sweet as you please. I nearly ran them down, running from one end of the building to the other and practically flinging my bags at the cabbie, a docile, smiling man who seemed perpetually amused at the world and its madness.

Long story short, if you have one train, and only one, that will take you out of town and home to the bosom of your family – don’t try and get to it through a city centre at rush hour. Long story short, I just about managed to plant ass on seat before Nottingham started moving and the Cardiff train strained its steel sinews to get me the hell out of Dodge.

In Disappearing terms, not a particularly good day – had breakfast, a handful of bits and picks at lunchtime, and at Cardiff, this evening, waiting for the last train up the Valley, I succumbed and had a Double Rodeo burger at Burger King. Have no idea what this last overnight of the year (Woohoo!) will have done to tomorrow’s weigh-in. I was fairly optimistic for at least having lost my weekly two pounds before I went to Nottingham. Now, I’m not sure. On the other hand, it has been the last of the normality-destroying overnights, of which regular readers may know there have been six in the last few months. This allows for the making of plans, the building of routines, from here on out. I’m still in a good mental place, in terms of discipline, so let’s see what tomorrow holds, and then push forward into the week. (Shrugs). Seems all that can be done.