Where To? Where From?

I've always been obsessed with doors.

Not with the different shapes, different materials, different colours, different fixtures - though those things are all lovely and also interest me - but with doors as portals.

The idea of a shape or item that stands between one space and another always presented a huge array of possibilities.

I used to wonder if it was possible to pass through a door, close it and when you open it again, find it looking out into a completely different place, possibly completely alien to the one you just left.
This of course led to wondering whether the room you were in still existed on the same physical plane of reality that it had originally and whether therefore you could return to the place you left by exiting via the window instead of through a door that may then strand you in a place you'd not be able to return from.

As you can imagine I wasn't a difficult child to keep occupied.
All you had to do was leave me to my own devices and I could spend hours theorising ways to keep track or hold of your original world, like Theseus using Ariadne's ball of thread to find his way out of the Minotaur's maze*.

Any book, movie or TV show that involved any kind of travel or access to such different dimensions or locations were therefore insanely interesting to me.

Sliders, The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe by C S Lewis, Stargate, Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, The Weather Witch by Paul Stewart, The Fionavar Tapestry series by Guy Gavriel Kay, Goodnight Sweetheart, all of those crazy ABC kids shows that involved the characters stepping back in time or travelling to the UK or Canada** possibly whilst also stepping back in time...

I'm also pretty sure that despite my lifelong fascination with such portals, that if I found one, I would not have the guts to step through one.
Or if I did so by accident I probably wouldn't do so twice in the event I managed to get back to where I came from.
What can I say.
I'm a giant wuss.
Then again the curiosity and the fear of missing out on a once-in-a-lifetime chance would be warring with my terror of being trapped forever in an alternate reality or time.

I expect it isn't a choice I'll ever need to make but, y'know, never say never.

And never look at doors in quite the same way again either.



*Except I wouldn't douche-ily abandon somebody who saved my life and ensured I succeeded at an impossible task. I'm looking at you, pretty much every man in every Greek myth ever.

**You know, countries we just happen to have relationships with who also like weird shows like that and want to cross-market/co-produce their kids shows.