ALL ALONE!

All alone!

All alone!

All alone,

In my home,

On my own.

(To the tune of "Over there!" - The "The Yanks Are Coming!" song, naturally...)

This is going to sound a little bit pathetic, and, to be perfectly fair, it probably is, really, especially if you visualise the song being sung with the back of a hand firmly clamped to my forehead and the legs imitating the actions of squid's legs and bleated out in a slightly reedy and self-pitying manner (with just a hint of irony thrown in, of course...).

But it is that time of the year when the Beloved has a lot of social stuff on and I... Don't.

Instead, whilst her late afternoons and evenings are filled with meeting up with friends for coffees and meals and chats, and going to works functions, attending official events and generally having an exhausting old whale of a time, I spend the evenings alone waiting for the telephone call which summons me to meet the train and bring her safely home.

It's perfectly understandable. These things are not open to partners and such, which makes a lot of sense to me. After all, who on earth would want a load of strangers whom nobody's ever met cluttering up their work's annual night out...?

So, while all that excitement is going on, my own little evenings are filled with washing up, running baths, writing nonsense like this, and backing up old TV shows to videotape (yes, I said videotape...) to clear some of that vital space on the hard drive.

It's up to sixty percent free now you know...

I'm sure it won't last...

God! This can be a truly ghastly time of the year, especially if you're me...

The three of us who toil in the little grey box beside the sewage works may perhaps scamper to a pub and grab a quick pre-Christmas lunch if we summon any enthusiasm and find ourselves with a lull amidst the chaos of this busy old time of the year for the needs of our business, but as far as "festive" (or indeed any) social activity goes, that'll be pretty much it for me until far, far into next year.

It's my own fault, of course, so I can hardly blame anyone else. For such a long time anything vaguely sociable has put me into such a state of anxiety that, even when I was still being asked to go to things, my mind would find ways and means of getting me out of it in order to avoid the panic-inducing terror of it all, and moving my home to a place an entire eight miles out of the way of all my old city-based chums probably didn't help much either in the great scheme of things.

To be brutally honest, though, even if I did get asked to go to something I probably wouldn't actually turn up and, even if I did consider going, I would spend the days and weeks beforehand worrying about whether I'd actually have anything to actually talk about and, to be perfectly frank with you, I would probably spend the entire time worrying about the Beloved and how she was coping with having an evening in on her own, fretting about my safety, whilst I was out gadding about not really enjoying myself.

We're nothing if not a neurotic pair, you know...

I do sometimes maintain the odd fantasy that someone will call up out of the blue and something interesting will happen to brag me out of this rut I'm in, but, given that it hasn't happened in more than a decade now, I don't expect things to change on that score any time soon.

In the meanwhile, there's washing up to be done and tunes to be hummed...

All alone!

All alone!

All alone,

In my home,

On my own.