Heading home yesterday evening I passed a friend who was heading in the opposite direction. What amused me about this encounter was that said friend looked slightly taken aback by seeing somebody he knew, his female companion did not seem so concerned. This morning I walked into the same friend travelling in the opposite direction, collar up, hat on and dark glasses. We exchanged the traditional “got to stop meeting like this” comment as you do and I continued on my way with a smile.
I’ve known this guy for years, he earns good money and is always happy. I don’t mean that he always smiles or that I only see him drunk I mean that he has a genuinely happy disposition. The thing is that he is also the guardian of a secret that society doesn’t want us to know, he is single. I often, very often, see him walking back past my place in the morning, the ‘walk of shame’ as it’s known. There is no shame of course, not from either party it’s all smiles.
All the stuff about needing somebody at home, companionship and the like is what people say to justify their position. The truth is that the least happy people I know are in relationships or the result of failed ones. I have a friend, a devout petrol head, who has brought a diesel car and he does the same; he is forever explaining how it “feels chipped” or is “just as fast”. The truth is that we don’t need a relationship to be happy but when we are in one we cover insecurity and unhappiness by telling the world how luck we are.
Sure people who are single occasionally wish they weren’t but people in relationships do it a lot more. If you add in the nightly manoeuvres of my pal I would suggest that the single people wouldn’t think about relationships ever after all has anybody ever actually loved a diesel?
In other news, after much deliberation, I have composed a long message and sent it to my estate agent of choice. There is nothing wrong with answering the questions that we produced over the weekend after all. I have no urgent need to pour hard earned money into a chance venue but equally I would be remiss not to evaluate options. There is no business urgency at the moment and there are still hurdles to overcome but it feels great to get a toe wet.
I also have an update on healing. They say that healing is all swings and roundabouts, you gain here and lose there. Some days you are in pain and some days not so much. At the moment, please don’t tell the phyiosterroist, it’s a pain phase. My wrists are doing their best to lock up in inappropriate positions and to wake me in the night. Shaking out the sleepy limbs produces a cacophony of sounds and resultant pain.
My shoulder has taken to slipping into whatever position it is that it doesn’t like when I am asleep and then punishing me for it when I awake. I get the feeling that Ms Nature is not a fan of the current exercise regime but frankly I don’t care. I have had positive feedback on the strength in my handshake and I am defeating jars with relative ease. These are tangible and physical results, real improvements in my life. On the flip side I struggle to lift a kettle without pain and tend to wince when putting a shirt on. If all that Ms Nature has is pain then she is on a hiding to nothing, note that I didn’t say I couldn’t tip a kettle just that it hurt.