My first thought, before I even turn to the task – and pleasure – of writing my letter – is the hope that this missive safely arrives at its destination. I have been through all the hoops recommended by the official sources, predominantly the government web site, to try and find the information needed just to address this letter, to have somewhere to send it, but there is no hope. Where I am sent contains no information, other than a number and most basic address, and the original source has even less. Which housing until you live in remains, then, a mystery until I hear from you, until you reveal the dark secrets of your location. This might come as a surprise to you, but this is not my usual way of beginning a letter!

I have a habit, when writing to anyone, of diving right into the meat of the subject, into what I want to write about, as if we have known one another for years. Life does not start with the first word, with the first breath, it has been running through time immemorial, before human thought, before this world, even this universe, was even created. It will continue long after the last clock has stopped ticking, the last diary entry has been made, the last breath is drawn. Somewhere out there a sun will rise and the dawn be heralded, or a sun will set, and a world will slowly revert to darkness and the peace of night time, and all that whether we are there or not. In many ways this is a comforting thought but, as the idea of absolute eternity is mind-boggling for many, so is the idea that whatever has been created, and wherever it might be, will continue regardless, without us. But we live in the here and now, with memories of those times behind us, and hopes for those times still to come and this, my first letter, has landed right in the middle of the here and now. Hopefully it has arrived in the right time period, at the right moment in time for its purpose.

This month, as you undoubtedly know, is Pride Month, and we celebrate in it our own ways over here in Europe too, with parades and flags and dance and music and shows and on and on, and it is wonderful. Yesterday I was in the northern town of Oldenburg for the thirtieth Pride demonstration – we call them all Christopher Street Day parades, or CSD, and the word Pride has very little bearing in Germany – which was attended by about fifteen thousand people, marching and strutting their stuff through the city centre, and seven people trying to sell Jesus. It was amusing listening to the god-sellers trying to hawk their wares, and then not being heard by anyone because a well-meaning group of people simply stood in front of them, their backs to the Word, and played on their whistles, shouted encouragement to the marchers, drowned out the cherry-picked demands and threats of eternal damnation. I have had the misfortune to debate such people now and then, often when two or three cult members – it is never one along, they’re scared to be alone with the Word – came to my door and wanted to know whether the world can be saved, or if I needed the Word of Jesus to save my otherwise damned soul. Misfortune because anyone who knows anything about religion, or the contents of the Bible, quickly falls down a rabbit hole with these beings who know very little, who have picked a few sentences or sayings out of the whole, and discarded, disregard the rest. A good enough reason, I believe, to avoid any religious, or political, discussion with the fanatical.

I tend to be more interested in the philosophical side of discussion – philosophy having been my thing as a young student – no matter what the subject – excluding these two – and the depths a person can go to when there is time and we’re in the right place. By depths I do not mean anything derogatory, but the depths of a thought, to its very roots, to its creation and along the paths leading to there, eventually the new paths leading back out and into other subjects worthy of study and discussion. It can be great fun to take an idea and work through its in many different ways until you reach a new understanding, or a new start point, but frustrating for anyone who is not used to this form of discussion. Anyone, for example reading Socrates, as related by Plato, would understand this as he is famous for taking two standpoints on any matter you care to name and then, through careful discussion and logical thought, changing the poles of who believes what; the end of many of his two-subject, or opposing-subject discussions and debates is that he has changed to believe the opposite side, and proven that his opponent has changed to believe his original side.

Funnily enough, I’ve seen many politicians who have followed this ideal in televised discussions of some intellectual depth and argued themselves right through to the opposing opinion, then trying to get back to where they were. The ideal proof, if you like, of people not thinking something through before they open their mouths. Books, my favourite form of exploration, allow a person to recap on their thoughts and arguments, and perhaps this is one of the reasons why I enjoy their content so much. Presupposing that the author has thought through their argument, and is capable of putting it down on paper. With the speed of the internet we have almost managed to get back to Renaissance or Enlightenment times with discussion, certainly with an advanced speed of discussion. Back in the days when the first reformists and explainers of religion – such as Erasmus or Luther – came out with their corrections and amendments to what had been considered an in fallible Biblical text, it was a case of having a good printer, and getting pamphlets out on the street as quickly as possible. The only thing that has changed today is the speed, where a blog post or an article on one of the many, many web sites allowing instant comment can bring a discussion to fruit with an alternate view. But, as I say, religion and politics are not my thing.

I haven’t unpacked all my books yet. Last year, back in April, I decided to move out of the small city where I was living – population about four thousand five hundred – and into the Big City. I was helped along the way by a disastrous fifteen months beginning,on a weekend when I was out travelling rather than being at home, with my heating breaking down. At the time, and up until my move here, I lived in a fairly respectable house close to the centre of the small city, with a garden and enough room to not only move about, but also have a large library of books, and a very large collection of photography. The heating breaking down meant that, in the middle of December back when winter was cold, a main water pipe froze. Over the same weekend the weather warmed up once more, and the pipe burst. It burst, of course, in the part of my house where all my books were carefully stored and shelved, and caused rather more damage than I care to recall. Sadly a large number of older books – and I’m talking about not books which are old, as such, but books which were antique – got caught in the deluge and could only be assigned thereafter to the old paper recycling unit. It was, at first glance when I got back at the end of the weekend, as if someone had reached in and torn my heart out, as I am sure you can imagine.

Those people who claim to do handwork, to repair and install, came to take a look, made an offer which I accepted, and then disappeared never to be seen again. I lived through the following year without heating, and with a very limited supply of water. Fortunately my shower until had its own heater, otherwise I would very quickly have also been living without friends. The experience caused me to re-evaluate, and to consider the obvious fact my entire social life is in the Big City, and I only return to the small city to sleep.

The apartment I have is very small, in comparison to that house. I have a main room, a bedroom, a hallway, kitchen and bathroom, and an amazingly limited amount of cellar space. I have had to make some decisions I thought I would never need to make; weeding out books and clothes and furniture to what I can keep in the space available, rather than what I have collected over twenty years in one place. Both the old paper recycling unit and the small street library close to my new apartment have benefitted from the smaller storage and living area, and I have been forced to hone down my library to those few thousand volumes which mean something to me, or which I am likely to use for research and writing purposes. I can well, imagine that you have been through a similar process of massive change, especially on the freedom of movement side of things, and know what I am talking about; my choice being voluntary and made over a longer period of time, of course. And I have to tell you, I am quite happy with what has happened. Surprisingly I managed to get a new apartment within a few weeks of starting to look,which is not something that is supposed to happen in the Big City, where living space is limited, and prices are high.

A re-evaluation of life is always a good thing when you get stuck in a rut. The thing is, though, many people do not know they are in this rut, that their way of life has become a boring routine with little or no change. It often takes a sudden wake-up call, such as a flood, to bring people back to their senses and make them see where they are, where they could be. Perhaps the world would be a better place if we had another flood of Biblical proportions, but that’s not really a discussion anyone needs to begin right now. There are many who are in considerably worse positions, and many who can find no way out of where they are. Such is the way of the world. My move, however, has concentrated my mind, even if it has not quite got me – after a year in the new apartment – all the bookshelves that I need, nor disposed of all the boxes of books which need unpacking, sorting, putting in their place. It has brought me back to the important and enjoyable things in life, such as getting out with friends, demonstrating for Rights and Freedom, writing letters, reading good books and, surprisingly, cooking.

I had a decent kitchen in the house. I rarely used it. Now, in this small apartment, I have an oven with four electric rings, some shelf-space, a large fridge-freezer and a desire to get into the cookbooks and see what can be created. Tonight, for example, I shall be trying Flaczki (Flaki or Tripe in English), which is a Polish dish made from the insides of various animal’s stomachs, usually cows. It sounds and smells very unappetising indeed, but for someone who is used to eating Haggis, as I am, hardly a problem. Not that Haggis smells bad, but this dish certainly does! When I was a child back in England we would often see tripe on offer, as well as skinned rabbits and other animals hanging up outside the butcher’s shop, but I never had a chance to try it. I suspect this is more because tripe has always been considered a Poor Man’s Meal in England, being the remains of an animal, the offal, rather than the prime cuts. I’m not going to say that we missed out on a good meal during my childhood, but I might have had a completely different idea of the world growing up if my privileged environment had been slightly more all-encompassing. Then again, from my teenage years, as I began travelling, I made up for this absence in my education by eating street food from street stalls, back street cafés and the rest – inexpensive, simple, good. Another change here is that, since moving, my life has been turned upside down by meeting up with someone who is now affectionately known as my Partner, since neither boyfriend nor girlfriend meets the demands, and this has spurred me on to do more experimental cooking, as they are vegetarian and, although I had been vegetarian for many years, I have had little experience of cooking. It’s one thing to have a big and well-provisioned kitchen, quite another to settle down and use it.

I noticed that you wrote about this all being outside of your comfort zone, something which I suspect has happened quite a few times in the last few years. It isn’t always easy to adapt, especially when we have been used to that same comfort zone much of our lives, and there has been nothing major to disrupt it. The excitement of life, though, is to step out, is to leave what is safe and well-known and travel off on an adventure. We all marvel over the stories of someone who has done something, and perhaps we also dream about such events and actions. But do we take that first step ourselves? And, when we have taken the first step, and the next, does our comfort zone expand? For me the comfort zone is just another way of saying a person is stuck in a rut and cannot be bothered to move on. Not that I am criticising you, or anyone else, for wishing to just settle down and have some peace and quiet in their lives, with no challenges or excitement, but is that what life is all about? What are we here for if not to see, to experience, to take on the challenges of life – voluntarily, not forced – and enjoy those few years we have when we can do it all, and appreciate it all. And even if it is just discussing new topics through letter writing, it is a move, an advance, a challenge accepted. Life shouldn’t be either if only I hadn’t, nor if only I had, but a chance to sit down at the end of it all and say what a ride. Now, I’m not sure where I heard that, probably from a comic book or something, but it seems right.

I suspect you already understand all of this, anyone with an interest in psychology should have given the idea quite a bit of thought, even though most would never analysis themselves. But since you’ve already taken then first step, stuck your toe in the water to see whether it is cold or warm, you might just as well dive in and get well and truly soaking wet. I also suspect you’ll have had quite a few other replies to your careful checking of possibilities, but how many of them are challenges?