Suddenly the scream of some animal came from the near thicket. The women started and asked what it was.
"It was a hill-fox," said Maitland to Clara. "They used to keep me awake at nights on the hill. They come and bark close to your ear and give you nightmare."
The lady shivered. "Thank Heaven for the indoors," she said. "Now, if I had been the daughter of one of your old Donalds of the Isles, I should have known that cry only too well. Wild nature is an excellent background, but give me civilisation in front."
Maitland was looking into the wood. "You will find it creep far into civilisation if you look for it. There is a very narrow line between the warm room and the savage out-of-doors."…
…You must remember that that visit to Fountainblue was the first that he had paid since his boyhood to his boyhood's home. Those revisitings have often a strange trick of self-revelation. I believe that in that night on the island he saw our indoor civilisation and his own destiny in so sharp a contrast that he could not choose but make the severance.
John Buchan – The Watcher By The Threshold (1902)
Some time ago I happened to look at a large, new 4x4 with its engine running parked by the kerb. It was a cold day - hence the idling engine. Inside was a middle-aged woman, probably waiting to pick up a grandchild from the nearby school. Eventually she switched off the engine, climbed out of the car and disappeared in the direction of the school.
She was dressed as if she had just returned from a long lunch with a group of lady friends, leaving me with the impression that she spent hardly any time outside in the open air. As if her world was house, shops and car and maybe some tourism in the summer.
I could be mistaken and there is nothing wrong with it anyway. I'm writing this blog post indoors. Yet it could be quite a recent change, this shift to an indoor civilisation. Buchan wrote about it over a century ago when an indoor life was not only possible for the rich - even middle class people could spend almost all of their lives indoors.
Does it matter? It is certainly a form of isolation.
6 comments:
Here, the thing that intrigues me is how being an "outdoors person" is morally virtuous for the very wealthy. There is a distinct and very precise uniform they wear, and they seem to be very self-conscious about it. I guess most of them, or their parents, made fortunes in the city. But "outdoors" in the right circumstances, seems a kind of fetish for them.
Apparently more than 50% of the World's population is now 'urbanised'. That must have an effect too.
Mrs DiscoveredJoys and I chose to live on the edge of the city rather than in a cheaper bigger house in a small village... mostly because we still had access to reliable public transport, shops, dentists and doctors. You don't have to go far outside the city urban area to find buses are a couple per weekday or missing entirely, no doctors or dentists, and Post Offices thinning rapidly.
So the appeal and practicality of indoor/outdoor, urban/country, living changes as you get older...
As Sheldon said in 'Big Bang Theory', why bother going outside, when humanity has spent thousands of years improving inside?
I like going outside (in my garden) when the conditions there are similar to an ideal inside, i.e. temp 20C or more, on the patio close to the kitchen door with access to fridge, kettle etc.
Morlocks you are all Morlocks......................
Sam - I'd be self-conscious about the Prince Charles tweedy look too. I wonder if cyclists are self-conscious about the Lycra look? We've seen a few who ought to be.
DJ - we prefer small towns which are still large enough to have the shops, dentists and doctors. Ours is a former coal-mining area where houses are fairly cheap so moving to a village would we expensive for us even if the facilities were okay.
Mark - we don't like staying indoors for a whole day whatever the weather. We'll even go for a walk in the rain rather than stay in.
Wiggia - or Eloi who adapted to the Morlock lifestyle.
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