My walk to work is a fairly short one. I live at one end of the high street and my occasional office is at the other, albeit up a slight hill, so it is not the most time consuming of ventures. I can leave my flat at half past eight and arrive with plenty of time to make a cup of tea and have a bit of a natter before the clock ticks past nine. This is one of the few advantages of living in a tiny city with only one main road.
The other is the thing I am about to say.
Living in a small place means people know you. They might not know your name or what you do, but they definitely know you. They know that at 8:40 every morning you will be walking up the high-street likely wearing a hat and a leather jacket in an effort to look vaguely interesting and they know that at 1:00 every afternoon you will be sat in Cafe Nero drinking a tea and eating a panini because you are that sort of arty, hipster wannabe guy. They will smile at you and nod their heads in appreciation of your existence because it's only polite to do so when you see someone you recognise. One of them will have played cricket against you once and you will share a unique bond that no-one else in town at that time will have. You won't know his name, he won't know yours, but you will know cricket. You will know that his side won but that you took an excellent catch to keep things close.
All of this almost recognition can lead to you becoming quite egotistical. People keep looking at you, people keep noticing you, maybe you are the best person here. It could be that. You could be a celebrity in your own back garden. Of course people could simply be looking at you because today you chose to wear a pair of shin high boots that clip and clop every time you take a step along with a very 80s leather jacket that is possibly the shiniest garment of clothing you own and a hat that is massive but you wear it anyway because the model in the Topman window was wearing one and you thought you could pull it off. Maybe it's those retro serial killer glasses you insist suit you or the bright ginger beard that protrudes out from underneath them that makes people more likely to look over because, against the sea of the mundane that is the city you live in, you look like a bit of a freak.
But whatever it is, for that walk, for that short period of your day that is unlike any other, you will feel like a somebody. You will feel like the big fish in the tiny, minuscule pond. You will lap it up, because you are king of your domain.
Then you will realise that being king of nowhere probably isn't as good as being someone smaller somewhere bigger and you will spend the rest of the day wishing that was how it was, plotting to make it happen.
You'll also refer to yourself in the third person a lot, because that's how you roll.
