I managed to mutter something about needing the weekend to think about the offer, even though I was pretty certain that it was something I would not be accepting.

Now I’m glad that the day is quiet. Katie can clearly tell that there’s something on my mind when I get back downstairs, but she knows me well enough to say little. I need time to process and I’ve nothing that needs me to stay around, so I tell her that I’ve something to do at home and escape before 3:30.

However much of a lazy slob Mike might have been, he was right about one thing: I’m a coward. The idea of spending months, thousands of kilometres from home, fills me with dread. Unfortunately, the idea of letting down a company that has been – and continues to be – so very good to me is also filling me with dread.

I grab some shopping and an extra bottle of wine and head straight for home. I put my phone on silent and sit myself down in my home office in front of my PC and start to work on my game. I’ve been coding it, on and off, for the last three years. It’s my method of escape and relaxation.

I coded my first indie platformer while I was still at university. It was never widely successful, but it’s sitting on Steam and sells a few copies that bring me a minuscule income every year and a small but dedicated following of players.

I continued with a sequel three years after the original was released and now, I’m working on the third and final part of the trilogy. I stream a little of what I do when I’m coding online and again have a small following who join the chat and make my otherwise idle time slip by.

I’m starting a stream early today, so there are very few of my usual crowd online, but Erik is one of the regulars and is currently working on the soundtrack for me. We’ve become friends over the last year or so, even though we’ve never met.

I can manage most of the graphics and code myself – it wouldn’t be much of an indie title if I couldn’t, but the music is beyond me. For the first two titles, I simply paid for the rights to some indie techno that I found online, but now I have somebody who not only wants to be involved, but is more than capable.

“You are ‘Rage Coding’ my friend,” he tells me after I’ve been streaming my session for about an hour and a half. There are now about a dozen of the regulars online, but they’re unusually quiet in the chat.

When I’m streaming my work, I mostly just speak to reply to the online chat messages, but Erik has an audio link so we can chat properly. I’m happy to mute my outgoing sound and talk to him and it won’t surprise any of my regular watchers. OBS allows me to switch away from my camera and microphone to only show my code on screen.

“I’ve a bit of a situation at work and I’m trying not to think about it,” I reply.

“I see. I think you might be better to share the weight of this problem. You’re making mistake after mistake the way you’re going right now.” He’s not wrong. I’ve re-written the same function three times in the last hour and it still doesn’t look even close to doing what I want.

It takes me a good ten minutes to tell him all about my strange day at work. I’m coding better while we talk and taking regular time-outs to interact with the community and tell them what I’m doing now I’ve figured out where I was going wrong the first few attempts. All the interruptions are what is slowing our conversation down.

Finally, I tell Erik to stay online and tell the thirty or so people on the stream that I’m going offline while I get some food. Shutting the stream down leaves me free to concentrate on speaking to Erik in Stockholm before it gets too late in the day for him to be listening to an idiot online.

“My first thought is ‘what a great opportunity’,” Erik tells me once the stream ends. “I’ve always wanted to travel to Africa, but it’s really expensive, particularly for a single traveller.”

“Sure, but I’m not talking about going on safari,” I tell him. “We’re talking about living and working in a very alien city for three months. Different customs, different language and very different people.”

“But the people you’ll be dealing with will all be graduates with excellent English,” he points out. “The weather will be warm and you will have time to relax and see the country.”

“And if I so much as even mention the word ‘gay’ I’ll be either locked up, stoned to death or deported.”

“No place is perfect,” Erik admits. “Although Sweden comes pretty close to it!”

“Hey, the Isle of Man is right up there too,” I contend in response. “Maybe that’s part of the problem. I’m too comfortable here.”

“Possibly. Perhaps you need to challenge yourself,” Erik agrees. “In the end, they are hardly going to sack you if you say no, are they?”

“I wouldn’t think so, but I might find myself being seen in a different light by the management, I suppose. Not that even that matters. If I did the same job as I do now for the next thirty years, I wouldn’t have any complaints.”

“Then you really are too comfortable.”

I can’t find any reason to disagree with his appraisal, so I say goodbye and hang up to really make myself some dinner. I’ve bought the food, so the very least I can do is actually cook it and maybe even eat some of it.

Over the course of the weekend I move through all the possible positions on the subject and then back again. I did, however, get a very serious amount of code written for my game. Streaming as you work for a total of fifteen hours over the two days will sometimes do that for you.

I stream my coding sessions as much for myself as for the viewers, although I do love the interaction and insight that they can provide. I’m never going to have enough regular subscribers to make anything out of it, so it really is all just for the fun. It’s much better to yell your frustrations at a real audience than it is to sit in your chair in front of a screen and mutter to yourself. It’s not really any different, but they do sometimes respond and that can really help.

I do break off for Sunday lunch with Mum and Grandpa. It’s become something of a weekly tradition now that there are just the three of us and we are all living alone, even if within a couple of miles of each other. Sometimes we gather at Mum’s house, but more often than not, we head out to one of the local pubs, several of which serve an excellent meal.

Neither Mum or myself ever bothered to learn to drive, but Grandpa is happy to do so, having given up alcohol after a liver-related health scare a dozen or more years ago.

Today, it’s the Crosby Hotel. I’d really hoped that between the two of them, I could get some firm advice, but they seem to be divided on the whole subject of my potential posting.

Mum’s always been the safety-first one in my life. I suppose that is only to be expected from my parent, but sometimes it gets a little much. She’s bound to be the one to echo my own thoughts.

“You hear so many stories, son,” she tells me. “Slums, street crime, terrorists, pirates and homophobia. It sometimes feels like they have a bit of everything that’s bad in the world.”

“The pirates are further north, Mum,” I suggest. “And I’m pretty sure I’ll not be anywhere near the slums. As for the homophobia, well, that’s just a part of life, isn’t it.”

“Are there things you haven’t been telling me?” she asks, suddenly putting her cutlery down and staring across the table at me.

“Nothing that matters,” I mutter. Of course I’ve had insults and slurs shouted at me by drunken morons. I might have made a point of never mentioning such events to her, but that was as much for my peace-of-mind as it was for hers.

Grandpa is quick to diffuse what he can see might become an argument. “You never knew my uncle Ted, did you, son?”

“No, should I have? I don’t think I’ve even ever met him?” I ask.

“Well, he was a bit of a recluse, but he was still around when you were born. I’ve no proof of anything, of course, but he was probably gay too. Never did have anything to do with the opposite sex, as far as I ever knew and lived alone in a little cottage with a garden that he was terribly proud of. Should have taken you to see him, beyond him being at the christening. He was a larger-than-life character.”

I’m a bit non-plussed. I’ve not really any idea why this relative whom I’ve never met has been mentioned at all. “You’ve lost me, Grandpa!”

“Yeah, sorry. Anyway, he was in the air force in the war. Spent more than two years as a gunner and spotter on a Catalina. They flew patrols up and down the African coast and he was based in Mombasa for quite a lot of the time,” Grandpa continues.

“Whenever I saw him as a boy, he would tell tall tales about driving through the bush on their days off, chasing elephants and lions long before the idea of a National Park was even a thing. I might still have a few old photos of him in uniform. If I’ve not got them, your great-aunt Sally might have them.”

“So, he was stationed in Kenya. I had no idea he even existed,” I tell him.

“He thought the locals were a bit lazy, but he always said that they were friendly and welcoming. He once told me that he thought seriously about staying, when the war ended. There were opportunities to get land to the north of Nairobi – good farming land and no mosquitoes. Then he got a pretty bad bout of malaria while he was still on the coast and there were mosquitoes galore. That really put him off the place. He was on a ship back home before the war with Japan ended and he never seemed to have the will to go back again.”

“Anyway, I think you should go,” Grandpa finally suggests. “Life doesn’t move on without new experiences. Even if some of them are bad, it’s better than vegetating.”

I see. If grandpa thinks I’m vegetating, then he might be on to something. More and more people around me are telling me that I’m getting too comfortable. Whether that’s comfortable with living on my own, comfortable with being single or comfortable in a job that, until now, hasn’t demanded too much from me is open to debate.

Still, comfortable is safe.