NOT GOING OUT

I don’t want to alarm you or anything, or send you into a state of shock or something of that ilk, but I recently received an invitation to dinner.

I know! It surprised me, too. These things simply don’t happen when you’re a social hermit living on the brink of obscurity at the blunt end of existence. Refuse to go out too often, or lose track of enough of your acquaintances and pretty soon they will stop asking and all that you’re left with is the TV set and whatever family commitments you’re still considered respectable enough to attend, and I can even find excuses to turn those down if I get fearful enough.

Anyway, this email popped in to my inbox that had been sent to a few of what I used to consider my social circle but now I could probably only really claim to have the loosest of orbits around the edges of.

The spirit is willing but the gravity is weak, if you understand me…

It was a very wise email, actually, because it suggested three distinct and separate dates, and was giving over a month’s notice, which meant that a refusal was unlikely (they obviously know me so well…) and that the spread betting options were wide open. The other four potential diners have such a complicated tangled web of busy lifestyles that I thought that I’d better see what worked best for them before throwing my own preference into the pot, although there were other, more basic problems with actually getting things sorted out as the broadband problems that I’ve already droned on at length about were still making reading my webmail a tad difficult, so my reply was already long overdue, and the preferred date of choice for some of my more quick-on-the-ball fellow eaterists was on the one date that I couldn’t manage at all, and, whilst the other two dates were much more reasonable possibilities for little old me, they would cause them problems. Such are the complexities of being sociable. No wonder I struggle to make the effort any more.

Social angst. It’ll get me every time, but, with a little bit of jiggery-pokery and the shuffling of the calendar deck, it’s all been sorted now and the promise of future munchies await, all scribbled in the diary and as immovable as a mountain.

Probably.

Well, you know how things are.

All this to-ing and fro-ing of the negotiations did make me start to wonder, however, when it was that I last actually went out for an evening with people who didn’t actually live with me, or were related in some way to the people who live in my house, and, to be fair, I don’t exactly cover myself with sociable glory even with them. Thinking about it, I very quickly came to the conclusion that it was rather a long, long time ago. In fact it was December the 17th last year when I last went to the pub for a drink with someone, an evening seriously curtailed by the sudden, unexpected snowfall that caused soft drink guzzling lightweights like me to scurry back to our cars and head homewards to avoid spending the night sleeping in the car under a snowdrift.

I did have a curry with a mate of mine over the Bank Holiday weekend in early May, but, apart from that the personal diary seems pretty bereft of incident. Not that I really mind. It all seems like such a lot of effort and many of the places people choose to go either look like the sort of place I’d rather not be in, or are, quite frankly, so terrifying that I wouldn’t get through the door.

Looking back I can be pretty certain that I’ve not even been to a cinema this year and that surprises me. I remember when I was younger and people used to say things to me about their parents never going to the cinema and I would be amazed. How could you not? I thought the films were all so brilliant back then and the home video market was still in its infancy (and rather expensive) and there were only three TV channels, so it wasn’t as if the average home was being bombarded by too many movies. I realise, of course, that the same thing has happened to me as happened to all those previous generations – the movies just don’t talk to me any more. The plots are either something I’ve already seen done much better, or they resemble those video games that I choose not to play either.

So what exactly do I do with all my time, I begin to wonder…? It’s not as if I’m busy. Back in the day, friends of mine with children used to say that they never got the chance to go out, but I still get the impression that they still have more opportunities for “wild times” than I ever make for myself. At least, I suspect, such a lifestyle choice means that you spend time with others of a parental nature, and, whilst running about after the ankle-biters does seem to consume a lot of their time and energy, it does seem to at least keep them in contact with other people.

I wonder what’s on TV…?