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Today's Post is About Alone Time
Dec. 23rd, 2013 06:40 pmI've talked before about how my family tend to go abroad for the holidays, all except me; and the wealth of little orphan annie jokes that I could, and have, spun from this.
This year, everyone's at home. Guys, it's awful. Spending the holidays with your family only works if you aren't together the rest of the year. I mean, my family are pretty close, and we rub along together very civilly, generally speaking. But these last few days, it's the sense of confinement, and enforced jollity, and the atmosphere of passive aggression so thick I'm surprised it hasn't set the smoke detector off. We're all stuck in, having an unofficial competition to see whose stress induced ulcer will gnaw through their stomach lining first. And making tea, passive-aggresively.
Which makes this the perfect day to talk about my favourite places to go alone.
I go lots of places alone, not a in weird, anti-social, trainee serial killer type way, but in comfortable with my own company, I have different interests and keep different hours from many of my friends type way.
Like, I don't understand people who won't go to the cinema alone. You'll be sitting in the dark, not talking. It's the very definition of Company Not Required. Actually, I really want to go to the pictures soon, just to get me out of this house, I'm probably the only person in the world who looked at the runtime for Desolation of Smaug and went: Well, that's just not long enough! I go to see bands by myself too, for similar reasons, it'll be dark and you'll be watching what's going on on stage anyway. This does require a sense of timing, so that you get there just as the music starts, and don't have all that standing around the Glasgow Barrowlands drinking by yourself awkwardness.
I do go to the pub by myself, not in a creepy daytime drinker way, or on Friday or Saturday nights because that's what my friends are for. But if you find yourself with an unexpected free hour on, say, a Sunday afternoon, and you've got a newspaper or a book, there's nothing nicer than an empty bar.
I could spend hours by myself in a bookshop or library. I'm that visitor who comes round your house and makes a beeline for your books; I'm not judging you, I'm coveting your possessions, slightly less creepy. Somebody once managed to seduce me using just a room of books; and it was a rented house, they weren't even her books.
One of my dogs is a bit anti-social, loves people, a bit unpredictable around other dogs, the first week I had him he tried to eat next door's prize winning pomeranian, I don't want to talk about. So I spend lots of my dog-walking time traipsing around bizarre places, up hills and down dales, where I hope not to run into other dog walkers. One of my favourites is walking up by the windfarm out of town, which lots of people say is an eyesore, but I think is strangely beautiful. Clears the mind marvellously, me, the dogs, and nobody else in sight. Of course, given the way the weather's been these last few weeks, I'm starting to think that I'm not a dog person after all, I'm a cat person who's made a huge mistake.
This year, everyone's at home. Guys, it's awful. Spending the holidays with your family only works if you aren't together the rest of the year. I mean, my family are pretty close, and we rub along together very civilly, generally speaking. But these last few days, it's the sense of confinement, and enforced jollity, and the atmosphere of passive aggression so thick I'm surprised it hasn't set the smoke detector off. We're all stuck in, having an unofficial competition to see whose stress induced ulcer will gnaw through their stomach lining first. And making tea, passive-aggresively.
Which makes this the perfect day to talk about my favourite places to go alone.
I go lots of places alone, not a in weird, anti-social, trainee serial killer type way, but in comfortable with my own company, I have different interests and keep different hours from many of my friends type way.
Like, I don't understand people who won't go to the cinema alone. You'll be sitting in the dark, not talking. It's the very definition of Company Not Required. Actually, I really want to go to the pictures soon, just to get me out of this house, I'm probably the only person in the world who looked at the runtime for Desolation of Smaug and went: Well, that's just not long enough! I go to see bands by myself too, for similar reasons, it'll be dark and you'll be watching what's going on on stage anyway. This does require a sense of timing, so that you get there just as the music starts, and don't have all that standing around the Glasgow Barrowlands drinking by yourself awkwardness.
I do go to the pub by myself, not in a creepy daytime drinker way, or on Friday or Saturday nights because that's what my friends are for. But if you find yourself with an unexpected free hour on, say, a Sunday afternoon, and you've got a newspaper or a book, there's nothing nicer than an empty bar.
I could spend hours by myself in a bookshop or library. I'm that visitor who comes round your house and makes a beeline for your books; I'm not judging you, I'm coveting your possessions, slightly less creepy. Somebody once managed to seduce me using just a room of books; and it was a rented house, they weren't even her books.
One of my dogs is a bit anti-social, loves people, a bit unpredictable around other dogs, the first week I had him he tried to eat next door's prize winning pomeranian, I don't want to talk about. So I spend lots of my dog-walking time traipsing around bizarre places, up hills and down dales, where I hope not to run into other dog walkers. One of my favourites is walking up by the windfarm out of town, which lots of people say is an eyesore, but I think is strangely beautiful. Clears the mind marvellously, me, the dogs, and nobody else in sight. Of course, given the way the weather's been these last few weeks, I'm starting to think that I'm not a dog person after all, I'm a cat person who's made a huge mistake.