Flying Solo

I'm very fond of my own company. I have never been afraid of solitude, sometimes relishing it so much that I might appear unfriendly or rude. I just really like silence and free space to think and absolute personal freedom. 

Where the diddly-feck am I going to get that then, with a husband, a job (that by its nature requires there to be another person in the room) and three needy need-sponges. 

Through a clash of scheduling there arose a situation where I went one way, my children went another, and my spouse went to a fancy restaurant with his dad. 

I travelled backroads in the dusk, roads that I have known since I was a child and yet I asked Little Miss iPhone for her assistance. She is irritatingly wrong-but-right. I listened to 76 minutes of a rugby match, got out of the car at a garage, got back in, heard the commentator lose his nut and then opened the door (thus turning off the radio) just as the ball went over the bar. (Watching that in French is wickedly sublime).

I joined a social occasion, in a place with which I am increasingly familiar and with faces that I have been looking at now for over twenty years. While the hair distribution has changed, the giggles remain the same. 

What I enjoyed most of all though was hearing new stories. 
[*Corn-alert*]  Listening to people, and finding out more about how others live their lives, is really quite enjoyable.

Yeah so I'm supposed to do that all the time at work, but that's an uneven transaction; they tell me what I need to hear in order to help them. Or I ask them questions and only listen to the answers I want to hear.*

But I've become genuinely interested in other peoples' lives. Possibly because I drone on and on about my own now, and I'm bored to tears. Or, subconsciously, maybe I'm storing up interesting stories to write about...

I probably didn't spend enough time catching up with my old buddies but, it seems, they are in it for the long haul and we will meet again soon enough (camping in the back garden guys; it's in the diary. And now the blog. Nailed on.) 
And I'll be back for the Rooibos.

Anyway, I liked being master of how late I was going to stay up and how many pints I was going to drink and what side of the bed I was going to sleep on. Just for one night though. Trusty companions have their place in the world, after all. 






*I like this from Joanna Cannon's "The Trouble with Goats and Sheep"

And I like this from the Waterboys. It's not about me, like. It's just lovely.