Lonely Is

Have been reflecting over the last few days how easy it is to accidentally go without human contact. It's exacerbated, I know, by my working hours and the nature of my job, but there must be lots of other people in the same boat.

The other day I don't think I had any kind of conversation until 4:00 in the afternoon. I got up after everyone else had gone to work, paid my bills by phone, and then studied, cleaned, read or watched telly until I went in to work, where I must have exchanged about four sentences with the captioner coming off shift before he ran for his bus. Then I sat under headphones for seven hours and got home after everyone else had gone to bed. Even when I go to aqua aerobics there's not a lot of talking going on - just some being talked at. And yet you don't notice - you get the impression that because you've been taking in TV, radio, email or whatever that you've been talking. So my long-suffering mates get run over by a talking steamroller when at last our shifts coincide or I get fed up and phone them in the wee hours. Still, this should all improve a bit when I go back to working at uni next week.

Futhermore - I've lived in my bijou flatette for about six months now and I still don't know my neighbours' names. (I only worked out the girls living on one side are Chinese last week after catching a 'ni-hao!' floating up the stairs.) Still, it's incredible how much we must have all worked out about each other. The man on my left and I, without ever speaking to each other, have devised an equitable system for the taking out and bringing in of our shared garbage bins. His lovelife seems to be improving because the lady who used to come to visit once a week is now there every couple of nights, because I hear her leave just after I get home. (Perhaps his lovelife isn't THAT great yet : ) I don't think he's much of a chef, though, because while I often hear him clanging around in his kitchen, they always go out around meal times when she's there. I shudder to think what they must have worked out about me...