The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon [49]
And then I noticed that I could still see the sign that the lady had pointed at, so I kept on walking toward it.
And then I couldn't see the sign anymore. And I had forgotten to remember where it was, and this was frightening because I was lost and because I do not forget things. And normally I would make a map in my head and I would follow the map and I would be a little cross on the map that showed where I was, but there was too much interference in my head and this had made me confused. So I stood under the green and white canvas roof outside a greengrocer's shop where there were carrots and onions and parsnips and broccoli in boxes that had a plastic furry green carpet in them, and I made a plan.
I knew that the train station was somewhere near. And if something is nearby you can find it by moving in a spiral, walking clockwise and taking every right turn until you come back to a road you've already walked on, then taking the next left, then taking every right turn and so on, like this (but this is a hypothetical diagram, too, and not a map of Swindon)
And that was how I found the train station, and I concentrated really hard on following the rules and making a map of the center of the town in my head as I walked, and that way it was easier to ignore all the people and all the noise around me.
And then I went into the train station.
181. I see everything.
That is why I don't like new places. If I am in a place I know, like home, or school, or the bus, or the shop, or the street, I have seen almost everything in it beforehand and all I have to do is to look at the things that have changed or moved. For example, one week the Shakespeare's Globe poster had fallen down in the classroom at school and you could tell because it had been put back slightly to the right and there were three little circles of Blu-Tack stain on the wall down the left-hand side of the poster. And the next day someone had graffitied CROW APTOK to lamppost 437 in our street, which is the one outside number 35.
But most people are lazy. They never look at everything. They do what is called glancing, which is the same word for bumping off something and carrying on in almost the same direction, e.g., when a snooker ball glances off another snooker ball. And the information in their head is really simple. For example, if they are in the countryside, it might be
1. I am standing in a field that is full of grass.
2. There are some cows in the fields.
3. It is sunny with a few clouds.
4. There are some flowers in the grass.
5. There is a village in the distance.
6. There is a fence at the edge of the field and it has a gate in it.
And then they would stop noticing anything because they would be thinking something else like, “Oh, it is very beautiful here,” or “I'm worried that I might have left the gas cooker on,” or “I wonder if Julie has given birth yet.”12
But if I am standing in a field in the countryside I notice everything. For example, I remember standing in a field on Wednesday, 15 June 1994, because Father and Mother and I were driving to Dover to get a ferry to France and we did what Father called Taking the Scenic Route, which means going by little roads and stopping for lunch in a pub garden, and I had to stop to go for a wee, and I went into a field with cows in it and after I'd had a wee I stopped and looked at the field and I noticed these things
1. There are 19 cows in the field, 15 of which are black and white and 4 of which are brown and white.
2. There is a village in the distance which has 31 visible houses and a church with a square tower and not a spire.
3. There are ridges in the field, which means that in medieval times it was what is called a ridge and furrow field and people who lived in the village would have a ridge each to do farming on.
4. There is an old plastic bag