Over the weekend, with all the confidence of a young bird convinced that, despite its parents squawking to the contrary, it is far too early to begin flapping one’s wings and leaving the safety of the nest, I came out to the guy organising my cycle group’s forthcoming Christmas meal (the jury’s still out on whether or not it’s early or late). Oh, and I don’t mean coming out in the obvious sense of the word … if my haircut hasn’t outed me by now, nothing will.

No, I’m talking something much trickier. Like I said, we’ve got a social do that doesn’t involve tearing off around the countryside on two wheels. Nope, this is a proper, sit-down dinner. With cutlery and everything. I’m told that unintended consequences of innocently claiming that “I didn’t recognise you with your clothes on” can lead to a lot of raised eyebrows from non-cycling partners.

Socialising whilst cycling is a very different kettle of fish to sitting round a table. The dynamics are unequivocally different and – this is the crucial bit for me – if you don’t wish to continue the conversation, you are deprived the solution of speeding up or slowing down to escape.

The obvious solution is to plan beforehand and sit with people you feel most comfortable with … but there’s a twist! In order to get people mingling, after every course, half of each table will get up and sit elsewhere, a game of musical chairs that, in principle, is an excellent idea but fills someone like me with horror.

And so, the coming out. Of course, he was brilliant about it and I have high hopes of getting through the night without succumbing to a panic attack. I’ve done everything possible to manage the situation, now just got to see how it goes on the night and try to avoid thinking about it in the meantime. Gold star for me!

A different way of looking at things? (23 July 2011)

I actually didn’t mean to write so much about it, but rather on the process of coming out as Different. From the perspective of sexuality, the team you bat for has very little impact on the practicalities of events and day-to-day life. Well, so long as you’re not a practising homophobe, but that’s more your problem than anything else.

No, what I’m talking about are differences that DO have a practical effect. On one level, we’re all used to it. Who, for example, hasn’t offered first choice of chairs around the kitchen table to an elderly relative? With varying degrees of tolerance and acceptance, we’re learning to provide a more inclusive environment. Well, for the things you can see, anyhow.

Emotional crap is trickier, in that it’s harder to manage but is also harder (sometimes damn near impossible) to understand and therefore accommodate and how we go about doing that ranges from the excellently empathetic to fear and loathing. Which brings me back to where my mind started to meander when I initially had the idea for this post – whilst we like to be viewed as individuals, names and not numbers, people with our own identities, likes and dislikes, put us together in groups of more than, say, one, and we exude an irrational fear of Being Different, whether that’s being judged as different from the group, and therefore exiled from it, or dealing with the person who is different.

Actually, that’s as far as the thought went, as I was out cycling at the time and had to stop wool-gathering in order to negotiate a tricky junction and having successfully crossed the road (without any poultry attached to me or the bike), I completely forgot about the topic until I updated my ‘bookshelf’ page earlier and thought “oh, I’ve not blogged for a while. Better do something about that.”

So, erm, yes. There you go. Discuss.