Tales Of Rebellion

The 200th Hour

We are confronted throughout our lives by risks that seem so wild, so disproportionate, so wonderful that we cannot help but take them. We are enticed by the gravity of the consequences, enboldened by the size of the stakes. Take your most daring leap and dare to win life, pulsating and writhing, blissful in all its messy glory. When we lose, we lose everything. The money in our pockets, the clothes on our backs, our sense of self, and the sense of the good and glorious in the world. But refuse to play and experience not joy, not sorrow, but confusion; a life without purpose or meaning, with comfort as the highest goal, with only fleeting dreams where adventures should have been. So play for money, play for fame, play for kicks or play because you're best friend dared you to. But for God's sake play.

This is the story of a man who played.

Yesterday, I was sitting in an armchair outside the Kingston Community Furniture warehouse on the Adams estate. Spring had come early and I sat back sipping a not-too-warm coffee while the others laboured at the unrewarding task of deconstructing sofas. That treacle sunlight was slowly dimming to an azure half-shadow. I breathed in that cool air, the freedom so achingly close that all that was left was to ask myself, am I ready? Ready for that world and all its freedom and danger? Unequivocally yes, was my answer.

For the English equivelant of breaking rocks in the hot sun, community service was not the untold world of pain that it could have been. I was neither worked to the bone nor thrown in at the deep end with various jack-the-ripper types. In fact the only difficulty lay in the monotony, the long hours spent waiting for a task while the supervisor gave us minute-by-minute updates on his political, sociological, philosophical and pseudosexual thought processes.

In these last few hours of punishment an end-of-term feeling overtook me and I lounged about enjoying what remained of the sun. The minutes dribbled away and I went inside to collect my slip; a rectangular ticket to freedom that over the past two months had become more valuable than money. The combined stack of slips on the shelf above my bed represented 200 hours of being in a place I didn't want to be, doing something I didn't want to do. And now finally the 200th hour was spent. I stepped out into the cool evening feeling light and bouyant like a pillow-case of feathers emptied from a great height. Once home, I pack my things to leave.