After I awoke from my nine and a half hour snoozeathon yesterday I was sat at my desk doing some work and my doorbell rang.
It’s a loud MERR MERR noise that you can’t miss, and I didn’t miss it. But I didn’t move a muscle to answer it, in fact, it barely registered.
Why?
Because visitors just don’t turn up without expectation, unless they’re baliffs. Over the years I have learnt to drown out the noise of a doorbell unless I am actually expecting someone.
I heard my name being called a minute or so later and went on to my balcony (amongst the bodies of my dead plants) fully expected to see Dawn downstairs having locked herself out, but it wasn’t it was Claire, my lovely girlfriend. She’d popped round because she was nearby. It was indeed a lovely surprise.
But it made me think – why is it I never answer the door? It’s a bit of a chicken & egg situation, is it because I live in London and in London no one just pops round becuase we all live 8 squillion miles apart from each other, therefore I don’t answer the door as I know it’ll be no one for me?
or
Is it because I’m the kind of person of whom people don’t think of popping round to (apart from girlfriends), therefore in an ironic switcheroo of Schrodingers cat, the bell never rings and therefore I have trained myself not to answer it.
I don’t get much post either – I know everyone says this, but Dawn always gets lots of interesting packages and things, I reckon she posts them to herself to make me feel bad.
Yes that’s it.
So, to conclude, I live in a lonely city and am lonely despite having a wonderful girlfriend who pops round unexpectedly, merely because no one else pops round. I am destined to end my life like Scrooge McDuck, only without the outhouse full of coins to swim in (which is good, that would make you smell funny, and I’m sure it would be impossible to swim in that, last time I went in a ball pool I nearly drowneded).