Thursday, March the 23rd, 2006

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Elbow Room

Elbow Room can be defined as free space on either side of a human body into which the elbows can be extended outwards. You can test whether you have Elbow Room by standing up, with your arms at your sides, and then raising your hands, keeping them to the side of your body. Your arms will form an angle with the elbows at the apex.

I am not familiar with many standard geometrical terms, so apex may be the incorrect word, but I am sure you know what I mean. In my view, a lack of precise knowledge ought not prevent me from applying my puny yet pulsating brain to matters of interest. You may retort, with some justification, that it would be easy enough for me to look up the information about which I am unclear, either in a reference book or on the internet. I cannot really argue with that, but if I started checking up on everything of which I am ignorant, I would be kept busy for ever and a day, and would not have any time to actually write anything. Do not, please, tell me to confine myself to writing about things I already know, or that I am confident enough to babble on about without corroborating the facts. There are indeed statements I can make which I do not need to verify, assertions which I would challenge anyone to disprove. I know, for example, that the character played by David McCallum in The Man From UNCLE was named Ilya Kuryakin. I know that Robert Burton wrote The Anatomy Of Melancholy under the pseudonym Democritus Junior. I know that I can find eternity in a grain of sand. Were I to limit myself to that which I already know, not only would I get bored, but so would you, the reader, still standing, I trust, with your elbows akimbo, relishing the free space on either side of your body, and knowing that this is what we call Elbow Room. Now you can draw your elbows in and sit down again.

I have of course made the assumption that you were able to extend your elbows outwards as suggested. But it may be that you do not have Elbow Room. Perhaps you are a dangerous and brainsick criminal and you have been confined, for the safety of both yourself and others, to a tiny, tiny cell. Maybe you are a fanatical adherent of some cause, and have gathered together with your fellows en masse, scrunched up against one another and shouting your heads off in protest, pinned to a designated section of the market square by riot police kitted out with helmets, batons and shields. Or you may be out in open country, taking the air, with plenty of Elbow Room and a vast amount of space besides, and you may have taken a wrong turn and found yourself engulfed by a herd of cows being driven slowly along the lane by a peasant. These thing happen, believe you me.

In the unlikely event that you are reading this in any of these circumstances, or in any other situation which does not afford you Elbow Room, you can always test the validity of my argument next time you are less squashed up.Bear in mind that you should never take Elbow Room for granted. It is a precious thing, and you would do well to treasure it.

Next week, I will be writing about something else of which I am not one hundred percent certain. Doing so will benefit both me and you. I have not yet decided upon the topic, but there is so, so much to choose from, for the universe is boundless and my knowledge of it is as tiny as the tiniest thing you could ever imagine in your wildest and most hectic dreams. If you would like to suggest a subject for my blathering, please write to Hooting Yard by email, using the header Hey! Why don't you write about… ?, where the ellipsis is replaced by the topic of your choice.