Looking up, by Deborah Jenkins

Yesterday, we drove to Gloucestershire to take my mum out to lunch to celebrate her 80th birthday. Mu mum was brought up in India and practically weaned on curry so we decided to take her for an Indian meal. It is a three hour trip to Cheltenham, so we knew we would be arriving rather late but my brother had found an Indian place that stated on-line that it was open twenty four hours a day, Impressive! we thought. So, we didn't rush, had coffee and rolled up at the door around 1.30. It looked small and cosy. I reminded my mum of the Indian place we took her to for her 75th. Very grand, with huge rooms and heavily starched table cloths and waiters, but completely empty, apart from us.. A rather odd experience really. This one looked much more suitable. I tried the handle.
It was locked. Irritated, I hammered on the door. A short and very smiley Indian gentleman opened up and peered round at us..
"Hello," I said briskly, "It says on your website you're open twenty four hours a day?"
He nodded vehemently. "We are," he said. There was a short pause while I began to phrase a response,"But not at lunch-time," he added.
"Sorry?"
He rotated his head in a very friendly fashion. "We are open twenty-four hours, but not at lunchtime,"
I would have been speechless, if I was the type.
"But that's not twenty-four hours, is it?" I told him. If I'd had my large Year 4 clock (with colour co- ordinated rotating hands) with me, I'd have demonstrated. But he was insistent.
"But we are open all night!" he said, "Just not at lunchtime."
Hunger, and disappointment for my mum, were combining to make my voice rise just a tiny bit and to speak more loudly and slowly, as unto a Year 4 child.
"But - twenty - four - hours - a - day means..."
At this point. my husband and my mum prodded me and spoke over me to thank the man and to ask him if he knew of any Indian restaurants in the area that would be open. He didn't.
"Only in centre of town," he smiled, closing the door.

Guess where we ended up. Go with the flow, Deborah,
"I'm sorry the restaurant was a bit empty...again" I said to my mum as we waited for my husband to bring the car round.
"It was lovely!" she said, "I could hear exactly what everyone was saying and we had exclusive service!" This was true and I have to admit you couldn't fault the food.

I've always thought I was quite an easy going person but in recent months I've had a revelation. I'm not. My husband has been advising me all summer to try to stop needing to know everything that's going to happen in advance, and just go with the flow. At first I found this really hard but I'm getting better. Life is actually quite a bit pleasanter if you don't feel you have to plan for and control everything. I've tried to work out why I want to do that. I think it's because I need to prepare for all the things that might happen so I can get used to them in advance. I don't like shocks.

I was wondering if this is a tendency for writers generally. We are so used to taking the initiative, planning what's going to happen, creating whole worlds we can control. Maybe when it comes to real life we struggle a bit. Also, we have vivid imaginations so we can always imagine those unlikely consequences that others won't think of. If we can eliminate these possibilities by taking action early on, so much the better! Of course the irony of the writing process for those of us who want to get published is that we have no control once we submit our precious work. We just have to wait, humbly or resentfully, for that yay or nay. And just when we're banging our heads on the desk, about to give up completely, another opportunity comes along, one that we had not expected and couldn't have planned for. It's a funny old business - writing, and life.

Maybe God wants us to go with the flow a bit more. Of course, it's good to have plans and to stick to them. If we don't, nothing will happen. But sometimes, He may have different ideas about the journey to our destination. We can be so busy looking down at the route we have created, trying to anticipate all the ways in which it might work out, that we forget to look up.

And, usually, that is where the light is...

Click on the link to see the novella on amazon
Deborah Jenkins is a freelance writer and school teacher, who has written articles, text books, devotional notes and short stories. She also writes regularly for the TES. She has completed a novella, The Evenness of Things, available as an Amazon e-book and is currently working on a full length novel. Deborah loves hats, trees and small children. After years overseas with her family, who are now grown up, she lives in East Sussex with her husband, a Baptist minister, and a cat called Oliver.