Is there anything more dispiriting than an unscheduled 'pop-in' from next door?
I’m sitting at a table outside my favourite breakfast café in Windermere. We moved from London to Cumbria only 24 hours earlier. It’s sunny and the place is crowded; there’s a queue of people waiting for somewhere to sit. “Don’t look up or catch anyone’s eye,” I hiss at my husband, Simon. “Someone might ask to share our table.”with glee when an invitation to a networking event arrives. I can’t think of anything worse.
“Are you here for the weekend or local?” asks the stranger husband. My shoulders slump. Here we go... polite chit-chat when all I want to do is stuff my face with food. In the middle of this, the nice lady who owns the café comes to give Simon a hug. It turns out they were at school together. Of course they were. “And you must be Jeremy! I’m so excited to meet you. Give me a hug!” I quickly try to swallow the hash brown and wipe some ketchup from my lips before standing up for my hug.
The conversation with the café owner and the couple sharing our table moves on to other good places to eat in the Lake District. The rest of my breakfast remains untouched as I can’t eat and talk to strangers at the same time. The woman with three young children at the next table joins in the conversation too, as it turns out her husband is the chef at one of the restaurants mentioned. Simon swaps numbers with her as he wants to eat there and it’s hard to get a table.
The reality is that everyone here is nice and friendly, and they don’t necessarily live lives governed 24/7 by Microsoft Outlook diaries and zealous PAs. When you literally have more space around you, you become less protective of your own space. If spontaneously popping over to someone’s house is more likely to involve a 15-minute drive and a couple of potholes rather than a 45-minute bus ride sitting next to someone in a K-hole, the idea makes a lot more sense.
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