THE HOME OF CHARACTERS

I've been thinking about the characters that keep returning in my life. That is an odd thing to say. I'll explain.

I was walking along the High Street when I noticed that one of the local pubs (The Falcon) has repainted its sign to advertise itself as "The Home of Characters". The Falcon is a small, old pub with a grotty pool table and oak beams stained with decades of cigarette smoke. While I was reflecting on 'The Home of Characters' not really being the main selling point of a pub, I couldn't help thinking about what it is that the 'falconers' are trying to say.

I think they're saying: 'look, it's a 'regulars' kind of place this, a close-knit community of the same old faces who've been coming to The Falcon for a sloppy ale, since we were boys with horses, so shut the saloon door on yer' cotton-pickin' way out and we can get back to gobbing into the spitoon and playin' old-time tunes on the battered ol 'piano in the corner.'

The Home of Characters. "All the world's a stage," Shakespeare once said, sagely. Not just The Falcon then; there are characters everywhere! And that's what got me thinking about the characters who keep recurring, turning up repeatedly at various points in my life.

I was going to describe them: the Pompous Know-It All, the Sweet-Natured Funny-Girl, the Catty Attention-Seeker, the Exaggerator, the Smooth-Talking-Manipulator-You-Can't-Help-But-Like, the Joke-Victim, Mr Impossibly Nice Chap and the Comic-Book Nerd... but I suddenly realised two things that made me stop in my tracks.

First of all (and I apologise for this) you might well be one of them. I don't want to upset you. Secondly, they are ALL ME anyway... alright, perhaps not the 'sweet-natured funny-girl' (quite) but there are elements of all of these characters that I see in myself... all the time!

Put me in a quiz and out come Comic-Book Nerd and Pompous Know-It-All. Stick me in a room of overconfident characters and I'll turn into the Joke-Victim, or Mr Impossibly-Nice-Chap if you're lucky. I've been the Exaggerator about a billion times and I'm constantly worrying about whether I've just manipulated words cleverly to get through a tricky situation...

So I started wondering whether they really are returning actors in the supporting cast of my life (there I am, Catty Attention-Seeker by the way - who else would think of themselves at centre-stage?)... or whether I'm just projecting people from the past, onto them. I think I get wound up by some of these characters because they look like me. Perhaps I was just recognising myself in the first place.

Well, this is all rather self-analytical today isn't it? I also feel like I've exposed a part of me that simply judges other people, slapping on labels like a lazy shelf-stacker with a pricing gun. We shouldn't expect labels - we have the power to be surprising, wonderful, amazing characters who change the world. Me too I suppose. I'm so much more than labels - even the ones I project onto myself. 

I feel like I need a sit down and maybe a quiet drink. I wonder what's going on at The Falcon?