Preconceptions
If you’ve never met someone, and have no friends in common, you have to form an opinion based on what you’ve been told or what you’ve read. But in forming that opinion, you are likely to make an awful lot of assumptions. Let’s take three owners of Solihull’s finest products. One went to public school, acquired a degree in law and then studied accountancy. One dropped out of formal employment decades ago and now lives in the country: many of his friends have strong leanings towards self sufficiency. One has very little money but knows a positively nerdish amount about Series Land Rovers and does all his own maintenance up to and including replacing gearboxes, while remaining just short of being a rivet counter.
Now let’s add a bit more information, without saying which of the three we are talking about. All are too young to have had to do National Service, so which one would you guess had received military training? The toff or the rude mechanic? Which would own a gun? And what sort of gun? A shotgun would fit in well enough with the first two: hunting and shooting for the first and hunting for the pot (or vermin control) for the second. The third, perhaps not so much.
What if it isn’t a shotgun, though? What if it’s rifles and pistols? Becuase he has these. Your perception shifts again. Maybe the second owner isn’t the sort of Good Life Greenie you imagined: maybe he’s a survivalist. Has he read The Anarchist Cookbook? Yes. Combine that with the survivalism, and you’ve got someone who begins to sound a bit dangerous. He’s probably got a fully tricked-out Defender with a snorkel, bash plates, the whole bit.
Then we go for a different kind of cooking. Which of them is going to give you the following recipe? Butter a ramekin; put a teaspoon of trout or salmon eggs in the bottom; break an egg over that; top with a slice of foie gras; and cook for 12-14 minutes, the first half of the time in a bain marie on top of the stove and the second half in an oven or under the grill. Sounds like the sort of thing you’d associate with the one you have already automatically assumed is richer: the lawyer turned accountant, probably living in Islington and driving a Range Rover.
Which of them is likely to have had at least one book published? And what sort of book? History? Travel? Biography? Photography? Cookery? A novel? Probably the employment dropout; but then it could be the one with the law degree.
By now, quite a lot of readers have probably seen through the questions and the descriptions. They have repeatedly been invited to make assumptions that are hardly supported by the actual information given. For example, I did not say that the fellow who studied law and accountancy became a lawyer or an accountant (in fact, he quit accountancy after three months); I did not say that the one who owns the firearms was a survivalist; military training is not synonymous with military service. In fact, all three owners are me, as many will by now have worked out.
Yes, I attended a public school, Plymouth College, most recently made famous by the diver Tom Daley. Yes, I have a law degree. Yes, I briefly studied accountancy. Yes, my last full-time paid employment, as a wage slave, was in 1981: I’ve been a freelance writer and photographer ever since. Yes, a lot of my friends are quite heavily into self sufficiency, including locally an ex-editor who knows nothing about guns or Land Rovers and an ex-soldier who knows a lot about both. Yes, I know an unreasonable amount about the minutiae of Series Land Rovers and I do all my own maintenance. Yes, Plymouth College had a Cadet Force where they taught me the basics of drill, shooting rifles, drill, yomping across moors, drill, blowing up bridges and drill. Yes, I own rifles and pistols (don’t worry, my firearms are all in the United States). Yes, that was my recipe. Yes, I’ve had quite a few books published: everything in the list I gave except a novel, though I live in hope.
The purpose of all this is not however to boast about my accomplishments. Certainly they’ve never made me a fortune. Rather, it’s about challenging preconceptions: others’ preconceptions about you, and your preconceptions about others. And about asking yourself whether you have to conform to those preconceptions.
“He’s probably got a tricked-out Defender with snorkel, bash plates, the whole bit”