Yesterday I went to our local post office, a small friendly place that doubles up as a Costcutter and is a million miles more appealing that the main one up the road, which feels a little like entering a war zone. This building itself is depressing beyond words, with stained carpets and stony faced employees who seem to think they are doing you a favour with their very presence, as they thrust stamps or forms at you, scowling through the bullet proof windows. It reminds me of the ” parking shop” as it used to be called on the Old Kent Rd where you went to pay your parking fines. The place crackled with air freshener and tension, as many people turned up ready for a fight about the rights and wrongs of whether or not they should have received a parking ticket, taking it out on the poor people whose job it was to deal with them. It must have been a nightmare place to work. Someone had the initiative to put heavy springs on the door so that when people flounced out it was impossible to actually slam it, and we all know there is nothing more designed to deflate the sails of indignation when you want to leave in a flurry of noise, but all you get is a rather pathetic hiss and a tiny squeak. All in all it was a very good move by whoever finally had the sense to close it down and revert to anonymous online negotiating, which has its uses, though I think we have tipped over to the dark side in some ways.
In front of me in the queue yesterday there was an old lady, I imagine she was around 80. It was obvious that she was a local because the cheery man behind the counter greeted her by name when she got to the window. She then spent a good ten minutes chatting to him as we all stood in awkward British silence pretending that we had nothing better to do. Eventually he wished her a good morning and she hobbled off out of the shop. I may be completely wrong, but I imagine that this brief interaction may well have been the only one of the day for her and that she went home to an empty house.
We seem to have created a world where it’s increasingly possible to conduct all your business simply by looking at a screen and pressing buttons, thereby avoiding any need for human interaction, a prospect that I find quite terrifying. There was a post on Facebook the other day about a Japanese man ( he was at least 35 so in theory old enough to know better ) who married a female character from a computer video game that is huge in Japan called Love Plus. Watched by thousands of people online, the groom in full white Tux regalia with his virtual bride a wedding dress, conducted a bizarre online computer generated fantasy wedding ceremony. When questioned why he had done it, he enthused that his new bride”doesn’t fight, doesn’t get angry if I’m late home, looks good in a short skirt and says goodnight to me each evening”. Well that’s alright then.
And there was another article about a factory that manufactures female robots ( the 2017 take on blow up dolls). All of the dolls are unbelievably expensive and totally bespoke so that you can order one to suit your own particular preferences, small breasts, huge breasts, toned tight bottoms, piercings , pubic hair, no pubic hair, it seems that anything goes in the search for plastic unresponsive perfection and gratification. The man who ran it was showing the cameras around his warehouse and opened a drawer that was full of different types of nipples each with a different colour, shape and number so customers could browse, make their choice and then fill in an order form. There was something laughable yet repulsive and tragic about the very idea, and slightly reminiscent of a Chinese takeaway.. “I’ll have the brunette with a number 7, a 2, a pair of 9’s, etc etc
Human beings have a natural yearning for some sort of connection and it seems desperately sad that despite this they seem to think the answer to fulfillment lies on a touch screen. And even more desperate is the fact that they actually convince themselves that this is normal.
Loneliness is a bit like when your bones get damp, that sort of seeping ache that pervades your very being. I was very lonely from time to time after Tim died, despite being surrounded and supported by wonderful friends and family. It’s hard to explain. And even harder to re visit the intense misery of the nights when I would wake up at 3am thinking he was next to me and then realising he wasn’t. Weekends and evenings seemed long and almost pointless. Sometimes I felt it most acutely when I was in a room full of people, at a party or on the bus to work. Perhaps it’s to do with watching everyone else around you getting on with normal things, and you want to be like them, but you have sort of forgotten what normal is for the moment. And then you see a dad out with his kids in Sainsburys and your heart shatters into a million pieces because you know that you will be going home to a house where there is no dad. And a house that in those days felt so silent though his very absence shouted itself from the rooftops so loudly that I wanted to put my fingers in my ears to make it stop.
We are very lucky in our street. Maybe because it’s quite small, and a cul de sac, but I pretty much know everyone who lives here, mostly on first name terms. People find this quite extraordinary in a city that is as huge and anonymous as London but I love it. It was always a relief when the kids were growing up to know that if anything happened there wasn’t a door that they couldnt knock on to ask for help, that somebody would always be in, usually with a set of spare keys. When I attempted to burn our kitchen down one summer while cooking dinner , having lit the cooker with a bit of newspaper, stupidly chucking it in the bin without checking it was out, turned the cooker off and headed out to pick the kids up from a class , I came back to find a fire engine outside. Luckily I had left the window open, the neighbours saw smoke pouring out and Bodger Bob from opposite had come in and put it out. It’s that kind of street. And the kind of street where we would notice if someone hasn’t been seen around for a while or needed help. The kind of street that its hard to hide away in for too long without somebody turning up sooner or later, knocking on the door with a cup of tea or a box of tissues.
I imagine if you lived on a boat it would be virtually impossible to be lonely. It seems as if every five minutes somebody pops round to say hello or to ask you a question. Having an open door seems to be an open invitation for a chat or to be plain nosey which obviously being very nosey myself is second nature, as I can’t get enough of a jolly good snoop, a trait I inherited from my mum who was always indignant when people closed their curtains in the village, thus denying her the chance of a peek inside as she walked the dogs. One Sunday on the boat, friends had come to visit and we had cooked up a lunch with all the trimmings and were just sitting down to eat. Without any warning a very jolly horsey woman in a barbour jacket stuck her head through the hatch and shouted “Whats for lunch today?”We wished that we had not bothered to get dressed and had been sitting round the table stark naked just to see her reaction.
It reminds me of Les, my birth dad who would spend weeks at a time on his own, travelling around on one or other of his old trucks, never really knowing where he was going to park up for the night, or how long he would be away for. I went to visit him once when he was staying by a windmill out near Aylesbury, and as I was leaving I asked him whether he ever got lonely. At this precise moment somebody knocked on the door of the van. It was the elderly man who lived in the cottage opposite who had seen the van and the lights. In his hand he had a slice of cake and a bag of striped humbugs. ” I thought you might like some company” he said.
And I left them to it, two old men, chattering away, the sound of their laughter drifting through the cold night air as I made my way home.
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