A Hermit's Life For Me

Recent events have reaffirmed my ambition to be a hermit.  After being caught in the middle of another family crisis, which forced me out of bed before midday on a Bank Holiday Monday after a late night, my desire to be simply left alone by the world was greatly reinforced.  I spent a large chunk of my working life having to deal with other people's crises, caught in the middle betwixt them and the law, which left me with no interest in becoming involved with other people's problems ever again.  OK, I know that one can't help but get involved where one's own family is involved, but nonetheless, I'd still much rather stay on the periphery.  So, being a hermit has long seemed like a great idea to me, setting oneself apart from the world, keeping interactions to a minimum and engaging in a life of contemplation.  Of course, much like the British Bank Holiday and religious celebrations, (which I discussed a couple of posts ago), the whole idea of being a hermit seems to have been 'downgraded' by modern society, replaced by the more pejorative concept of the 'recluse'.  This term has entirely negative connotations, used by the media to conjure up visions of sad, probably mentally ill, bastards, living miserable lives in filth and damp infested flats or run down houses full of stacks of hoarded rubbish, newspapers and porn mags.  Preferring one's own company to that of other people nowadays sees you marked down as some kind of 'dangerous loner', (especially if you have a 'weird' hobby like building plastic kits or model railways), likely to be involved in terrorist activities, a sex offender or a serial killer.  

Personally, I blame the explosion in modern personalised communications.  Thanks to the advent of mobile phones, e-mail, social media and the like, there now seems to be a general expectation that we should be available to everyone at all times - friends, family, even employers.  If you refuse to be, then you are immediately branded 'anti-social' and considered some kind of weirdo.  I found landlines were bad enough in terms of being an invasion of one's privacy, but at least with those you didn't get constant reminders that you had missed a call and you could always claim that you were out when someone called, or at least in another part of the house.  With mobile phones, though, they can get you anywhere, any time.  If they can't get through they leave voice mails, send texts, e-mails, use messenger and chat apps.  It's relentless. While I have a mobile, I've disabled the voice mail function and refuse to get involved in the likes of What's App in order to minimise my availability.  It isn't just modern technology and social attitudes that make it increasingly difficult to be a hermit.  Traditionally, hermits live in remote caves or huts in the woods or the mountains.  These days, caves are in short supply and even if you owned a remote piece of land where you could build a hut, you'd doubtless have to go through some tortuous planning permission process, with your nearest neighbours, situated a hundred miles away, undoubtedly raising a successful objection on the grounds that it blocks their view.  I have contemplated simply digging a deep hole in my back garden and living there, but again, I'd probably need planning permission for that, especially as I live in a 'conservation area'.  (Yeah, incredibly, Crapchester has 'conservation areas' - the town having demolished so much of its heritage back in the early seventies, it is now desperate to hold onto anything built prior to that).  So, I guess that I'll just have to settle for being a 'recluse', trying to keep myself to myself in the privacy of my own home.  Fat chance.