Communiloving

I am just coming to the end of three days home alone. It's been strange.

When I arrived back from the Lake District on Thursday (lovely, thank you very much) I was a little bit excited about having the house to myself. Now I should say, as one of my readership of two is my housemate, that I wasn't excited because I don't like my housemates. They're wonderful. And when you're alone, no matter how long you wait, spaghetti bolognese never magically appears in front of you. But the concept of some alone time seemed quite attractive. A good chance to sit and be and think and reflect and go to the loo with the door open seemed too good an opportunity to pass up. I think I thought I would come out of the experience a bigger person. Maybe even a better one.

To be fair I enjoyed it for a bit. Not having to queue to use the laptop/toilet/shower/washing machine/straightners/mirror/stairs/hoover (I joke on the last one) was good novelty value. Choosing to live in mess is quite liberating, tidying things away and them staying away is nothing short of brilliant. And coming and going and not telling anyone where you are makes you feel a little bit Destiny's Child (without being black or having sold 40 million records worldwide). But...it's also a little bit dull.

It's quite a nice thing to appreciate afresh that you really enjoy living with the people that you are contractually obliged to live with. Whilst I have an irrational annoyance towards anyone who might dares turn on the bathroom extractor fan before I'm awake, and I can see anyone who tries to make conversation with me in the morning as setting out to ruin my day/life, and generally no one else will ever match up to the golden standards I set in all other areas of my life, it turns out that for Party Cat to live up to her partying* reputation she needs other people to bounce off of, have jokes, occassionally irritate and generally share life with.

So I'm a little bit scared that this is just the impact of Orange's advertising campaign that I'm just realising I am who I am because of everyone else. I would prefer to think I am much deeper than this. I tried to engage Esther in a conversation earlier which likened my experience of living alone to the age old A Level Philosophy dilemma of whether a tree makes a sound if it falls in an empty forest. She didn't give it much time of day, and, to be fair, even apart from my three contemporaries I probably am still real and do exist, but I think I have realised the life part of Parklife is in the community that exists between these walls. Parkexistance is probably a more appropriate description of this weekend. Anyway, everyone (plus an extra) is coming home this evening and I imagine at 7.55 in the morning I will be mentally cursing whichever of them has the weakest bladder, but, right now, I praise God for having placed us all here.

Community is something I could (and do) bang on about for ages, but I think it's how we were created to exist. Not necesarily in the shape that this one does (humanity would die out fairly quickly!), but in various forms of interdependent existance. It just works. I might never be able to wire a plug, drive a car, play a piano or speak Russian, but I'm glad I know people who can.

*Drinking tea and playing Scrabble.