Sweet Gilbert O'Sullivan

Ruminations on Solitude

I’ve just moved house. Which is an excellent way to remind yourself how awful it is to move house. Not that my move was even a particularly traumatic one: I didn’t have that much stuff, and getting into my own place after two years of not having my own home is a fantastic development.

But gee it’s exhausting, finding a home. All the faff, all the work, all the heavy lifting and the spending money and the setting stuff up and the reminding yourself that you’re a grown-up and you can’t just live out of boxes and suitcases for the rest of your life.

But after the exhaustion-slash-euphoria of moving in, I’ve been hit by the loneliness that is peculiar to a fortysomething man who has never lived alone before. I don’t know if that fact is indicative of my success in cultivating family ties throughout my life, or indicative of my arrested development - suffice to say, finding yourself alone in a house after more than four decades of sharing various houses with various incarnations of family is, to say the least, weird.

I don’t think I’m particularly cut out to live alone, which may come as a surprise to those who have noted how strongly my nature leans to the anti-social. But I like having someone to watch TV with. I like having someone to eat dinner with. I like having people to talk to about stuff, even if the stuff is banal and trivial and made up primarily of Monty Python quotes and interesting facts about the Beatles.

Maybe there’s a picture emerging about how I ended up alone…

I feel a tad sad, at the start of this awfully big adventure, by myself for the first time and trying to figure out how to organise my days. But the sadness is woven through a larger positivity. If it’s an effort to overcome this loneliness, I think it’s an effort well worth making, because this is an opportunity to create something all on my own. With luck I won’t be alone in this little house for too long, but while I am, I hope I can summon the effort to be more of a proper grown-up than I ever have before, and take advantage of the fact that being alone also carries with it a certain freedom. And even freedom that you didn’t ask for can be used to your own benefit.

For now, though, I’m just focusing on the fact that I don’t have to wear clothes if I don’t want to. And the weather recently has made that a true blessing.

The Weekly Creativity

It’s a Poem!

She sat down, and he sat down

And their eyes never met for one single second

And the vibrations of her anger surged through the table and coursed up his arms

And the ball of his regret curled tighter and tighter in his chest

And he speared a chip and remembered not to cry

And she swallowed hard and remembered not to scream

She stood up, and he stood up

And they walked to the couch and sat down

Beside each other

And the smoke of her despair stained the ceiling

And the stone of his apathy sat hard in his belly

And she wondered if she could stand him a moment longer

And he wondered if he could stand himself

She walked out, and he walked out

And they went to bed

Together

Again

The Weekly List

The Ten Greatest British Comedy Double Acts

Cook and Moore

Fry and Laurie

French and Saunders

Mitchell and Webb

The Two Ronnies

Reeves and Mortimer

Morecambe and Wise

The Mighty Boosh

Walliams and Lucas

Broad and Anderson

The Weekly Plugs

Plugs for Myself

Check out my comeback last year at the Babble Class Reunion at Bar Open in Fitzroy.

Plugs for Other People

The funniest sports writer in the country, by many a mile, is Dan Liebke. If you like cricket you’ll love his writing. If you don’t like cricket you’ll still probably love his writing. He’s just that good.