Working in accountancy and audit it is not difficult to find examples of people who - to my mind - display characteristics of "Trainspotters syndrome". Whether or not they are actually on the autistic spectrum I couldn't say. In work and elsewhere I have encountered people who are technically excellent, intellectually robust, and good at problem solving. And yet they lack certain social skills. I think of people who fail to anticipate that you want to pass them in a narrow corridor and thus fail to make minor adjustments to their path, who seem unable to pick up signs that the discussion has gone on too long or is boring or irrelevant, and often talk in a virtual monotone or in a long-winded over-pedantic way - I was in a conversation once years ago. I and a close colleague, a Leeds fan, were continuing our perpetual mutual wrangling about football; he obviously realised that this was excluding the third colleague who had joined us from the Reading Office, so he said "Do you support any team?" to which the colleague responded "I follow football from a layperson's point of view but it would be inaccurate to describe me as a fan of a specific team, except that I do take an interest in the progress of England in World Cup, European Championships etc".
A few months ago our Goodies Stash was a box of Celebrations and one of my colleagues decided it would be helpful to sort them. Her logic was that the variety with the fewest occurrences should be at the bottom of the box, those with the most at the top. I watched her sort them and said that it gave me a warm feeling of security. Another colleague laughed, and said "You can tell we're auditors" and went onto explain how she has to have a list when she goes shopping and it makes her feel very uncomfortable when the shop is rearranged. We continued the discussion for a while and concluded that if we were to put this to random colleagues in a case-working or policy unit they would think us nuts.
My brother visited a few years ago, when he was doing his psychiatry stint as part of his training. As is customary when people visit, he assisted with the washing up and said he wouldn't put the stuff away because he didn't know where it went. I said without thinking - white mugs at the front, black at the back. He gave me "a look". I said, it's just the way I want them, I know it serves no constructive purpose but I feel uncomfortable if they're wrong. He said that just because you know you have a problem doesn't diminish the fact that it is a problem.
When we were teenagers, my sister and I had a massive row about the record case we shared. I insisted that the singles be stored in alphabetical order by group or singer, she put them in randomly. My father intervened firmly on my side, that it makes sense to have order. I recently inspected my mother's CD collection, which makes no sense, CDs put neatly into a rack but in a completely random order. I was moaning about Jimmy, about the things he does that annoys me, the greatest of which is coat-hangers. In my world, coat-hangers have to be used for the specific article with which they are associated. Jimmy doesn't get it. (He also doesn't get that the opening on the duvet cover has to be at the bottom of the bed). My mother gave me an indulgent look and said that my father had been very particular about coat hangers, which I hadn't previously known, but I felt pleased. I perceive my mother as being without a sense of order and logic - although she is a very tidy, neat and organised person. My sister similarly. I'm not tidy, neat and organised but I do need a sense of order.
One of my obsessions in life is list-making. Throughout the entire 1980s I wrote down the pop charts. Every week without fail. I started with the top ten, and moved onto the top 20. I have a file where it is all neatly written down, week by week. Copied painstakingly out of my diary, which also included the 'rising' entries in 21-40, annotated with whether I had that single, whether it was a re-release or a cover, whether it was on Top of the Pops that week and so on. I kept a similar file on the then First Division football results, including a calculation of the average number of goals per game, plus a running tally of overall leading goalscorers. My life would have been so much easier if I had had computer technology.
I used to think that the world divided into those who had Trainspotters Syndrome and those that don't, vividly illustrated by my own immediate family. But as time goes by, I am not so sure. I suspect it might be a bit like sexual orientation - those who are the most vociferous in their homophobia are usually the closet cases, whereas those who are able to acknowledge that there is an element of bisexuality in their make-up, never or seldom acted upon, are actually more genuinely heterosexual (whatever that means). And perhaps those of us who acknowledge our Trainspotting tendencies are more balanced than those who simply mock the phenomenon.
That having been said, although I acknowledge and embrace my Trainspotting tendencies, I am intolerant of some aspects. I'm not great on spacial awareness but I compensate with excellent peripheral vision. This week at work I was walking along a corridor, well, not even a corridor, a passage between cupboards that acts as walkway. There was a chap who completely failed to get out of my way. I noticed by the logo on his shirt he was an outside IT contractor. Later the same day, the lift came and a woman walked out. I proceeded to walk in, only to find this IT Guy standing in a gentlemanly way allowing me in before he came out. This irritated me profoundly even though I knew that made me a bad person. I concluded that he probably lacked the instinct to understand the proper etiquette (get out of the lift, get out of the lift promptly, rapidly move away from lift doors) but being a decent chap had learnt it was polite to give way to people in general.
It's easy to make fun of Trainspotters, and those that display such tendencies, and I am guilty of such, but I wonder whether those without any such tendencies are in fact the weirdos. My sister is a voracious collector, my mother needs little routines and is over cautious - eg bottles of wine have to be opened over the sink, the foil having been cut by a special foil-cutting implement. And the thing is, little routines and rituals are not just important for our inner sense of well-being, but also remove some of the uncertainty from life. Many people have the same breakfast every day, because it saves having to think, decide, prepare, at a time when faculties are not up to thinking, deciding and preparing. That's another one - my mother gets bowl, plate and mug out the night before in preparation for breakfast. I don't get it! And she thinks my lists, coat-hangers and alphabetical arrangements are weird.
Jimmy's weirdness is his obsessive cleanliness. I find it useful to keep a cloth by the sink to mop up minor spills. It doesn't matter too much how clean it is, it's just to mop up spills. He keeps throwing them away. He uses way too much bleach, when I raised this, because the smell gets to me, he eradicated bleach entirely from the house. His latest wheeze has been using toilet-cleaner to keep mildew and lime-scale down in the shower. Effective yes, but overkill, and potentially dangerous for my skin, and maybe his. Oh, and the ritual transferring of teabags, coffee grounds and eggshells to the garden, which is good and green and organic but is bordering on the Trainspotting!
I have never stood at the end of a platform and taken train numbers. But I do have a minor obsession with ambassadorial cars.
Recent Comments