Mark Haddon - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

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:

I am standing in a field that is full of grass.

There are some cows in the fields.

It is sunny with a few clouds.

There are some flowers in the grass.

There is a village in the distance.

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.” [ 11 11 This is really true because I asked Siobhan what people thought about when they looked at things, and this is what she said. ]

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:

There are 19 cows in the field, 15 of which are black and white and 4 of which are brown and white.

There is a village in the distance which has 31 visible houses and a church with a square tower and not a spire.

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.

There is an old plastic bag from Asda in the hedge, and a squashed Coca-Cola can with a snail on it, and a long piece of orange string.

The northeast corner of the field is highest and the southwest corner is lowest (I had a compass because we were going on holiday and I wanted to know where Swindon was when we were in France) and the field is folded downward slightly along the line between these two corners so that the northwest and southeast corners are slightly lower than they would be if the field was an inclined plane.

I can see three different types of grass and two colors of flowers in the grass.

The cows are mostly facing uphill.

And there were 31 more things in this list of things I noticed but Siobhan said I didn’t need to write them all down. And it means that it is very tiring if I am in a new place because I see all these things, and if someone asked me afterward what the cows looked like, I could ask which one, and I could do a drawing of them at home and say that a particular cow had patterns on it like this:

And I realize that I told a lie in Chapter 13 because I said “I cannot tell jokes,” because I do know 3 jokes that I can tell and I understand and one of them is about a cow, and Siobhan said I didn’t have to go back and change what I wrote in Chapter 13 because it doesn’t matter because it is not a lie, just a clarification.

And this is the joke.

There are three men on a train. One of them is an economist and one of them is a logician and one of them is a mathematician. And they have just crossed the border into Scotland (I don’t know why they are going to Scotland) and they see a brown cow standing in a field from the window of the train (and the cow is standing parallel to the train).

And the economist says, “Look, the cows in Scotland are brown.”

And the logician says, “No. There are cows in Scotland of which one at least is brown.”

And the mathematician says, “No. There is at least one cow in Scotland, of which one side appears to be brown.”

And it is funny because economists are not real scientists, and because logicians think more clearly, but mathematicians are best.

And when I am in a new place, because I see everything, it is like when a computer is doing too many things at the same time and the central processor unit is blocked up and there isn’t any space left to think about other things. And when I am in a new place and there are lots of people there it is even harder because people are not like cows and flowers and grass and they can talk to you and do things that you don’t expect, so you have to notice everything that is in the place, and also you have to notice things that might happen as well. And sometimes when I am in a new place and there are lots of people there it is like a computer crashing and I have to close my eyes and put my hands over my ears and groan, which is like pressing CTRL + ALT + DELand shutting down programs and turning the computer off and rebooting so that I can remember what I am doing and where I am meant to be going.

And that is why I am good at chess and maths and logic, because most people are almost blind and they don’t see most things and there is lots of spare capacity in their heads and it is filled with things which aren’t connected and are silly, like, “I’m worried that I might have left the gas cooker on.”

191.My train set had a little building that was two rooms with a corridor between them, and one was the ticket office where you bought the tickets, and one was a waiting room where you waited for the train. But the train station in Swindon wasn’t like that. It was a tunnel and some stairs, and a shop and cafe and a waiting room like this:

But this is not a very accurate map of the station because I was scared so I was not noticing things very well, and this is just what I remember so it is an approximation.

And it was like standing on a cliff in a really strong wind because it made me feel giddy and sick because there were lots of people walking into and out of the tunnel and it was really echoey and there was only one way to go and that was down the tunnel, and it smelled of toilets and cigarettes. So I stood against the wall and held on to the edge of a sign that said Customers seeking access to car park please use assistance phone opposite, right of the ticket officeto make sure that I didn’t fall over and go into a crouch on the ground. And I wanted to go home but I was frightened of going home and I tried to make a plan of what I should do in my head but there were too many things to look at and too many things to hear.

So I put my hands over my ears to block out the noise and think. And I thought that I had to stay in the station to get on a train and I had to sit down somewhere and there was nowhere to sit down near the door of the station so I had to walk down the tunnel. So I said to myself, in my head, not out loud, “I will walk down the tunnel and there might be somewhere I can sit down and then I can shut my eyes and I can think,” and I walk down the tunnel trying to concentrate on the sign at the end of the tunnel that said WARNING CCTV in operation.And it was like stepping off the cliff on a tightrope.

And eventually I got to the end of the tunnel and there were some stairs and I went up the stairs and there were still lots of people and I groaned and there was a shop at the top of the stairs and a room with chairs in it but there were too many people in the room with chairs in it, so I walked past it. And there were signs saying Great Westernand cold beers and lagersand CAUTION WET FLOORand Your 50p will keep a premature baby alive for 1.8 secondsand transforming traveland Refreshingly Differentand IT’S DELICIOUS IT’S CREAMY AND IT’S ONLY ?1.30 HOT CHOC DELUXEand 0870 777 7676and The Lemon Treeand No Smokingand FINE TEASand there were some little tables with chairs next to them and no one was sitting at one of the tables and it was in a corner and I sat down on one of the chairs next to it and I closed my eyes. And I put my hands in my pockets and Toby climbed into my hand and I gave him two pellets of rat food from my bag and I gripped the Swiss Army knife in the other hand, and I groaned to cover up the noise because I had taken my hands off my ears, but not so loud that other people would hear me groaning and come and talk to me.