strangereality157

I'm in the middle of a long-coveted week off work, the sun is shining (although there's a chill wind a-blowing), and I said hello to my new neighbours for the first time today.

They moved in about a month ago, a middle-aged couple with no children and a small yapping dog. I'd managed to avoid them until now. I dislike meeting people on principle, and have gone to extraordinary lengths over the past 4 weeks to avoid the new neighbours.

For example, if I was about to leave the house, my hand on the front door handle, and I heard them moving around outside, I would go back inside, and wait for them to go away - then and only then would I emerge (cautiously, peering left to right to make sure I wasn't ambushed). This scenario, in varying variations, has occurred approximately a dozen times. Less common have been the times when I've been coming the other way - from outside my house toward my house. Whenever I've been walking along the pavement heading toward my house, and noticed the new neighbours milling around outside their front door, doing whatever it is that these accursed people do (the man of the house loves to tinker with his car, I've noted with concern), I've done an abrupt about-turn - or volte face, if I want to get all Latin on your ass for a moment, and why wouldn't I. I've scurried back the way I came and spent uncomfortable minutes lurking by the bus stops until the coast was clear and I could return home in peace.

It's nothing to do with the new neighbours. I'm sure that they're a very nice, pleasant couple. I'm just as unkeen to go through the ghastly hail-fellow-well-met routine with anybody at all, whoever they are. I have crossed roads and hid behind bushes to avoid bumping into brothers, cousins, friends, and charity collectors. I never want to meet people in the street or talk to them under any circumstances, whoever they are. I'm an indiscriminate quasi-sociopath.

Today I was caught out - I was sloppy. I was careless. I was returning from the library, carrying a stack of books in a supermarket carrier bag. I'm learning HTML at a very satisfying pace, and decided to go all-in and get every book on Javascript, CSS, and advanced thingumajigs that were on the library's shelves; they had plenty. I was preoccupied with the bag, which also contained a bottle of Jim Beam, a giant bottle of caffeine-free Diet Coke, and two cans of chilli con carne.

I'm a poor bag-packer - everything was packed wrongly. One or more of the books' plastic library-coverings had pierced the bag low down, near its figurative waterline, and the rent was growing. I was worried the whole bag would fall apart and I'd be left sprawled on my hands and knees in the thoroughfare, simultaneously trying to gather up and conceal from public view my bottles of Jim Beam and Diet Coke, the tins of chilli, and the bulky copies of Javascript In 24 Hours Or Bust and XHTML For Stupid Fuckers and the like.

So I was looking down at the bag in my hand, instead of keeping a watchful eye out for bandits in the vicinity. I was at the door of my house when I heard him. "Hello? Hello there. Hello." I looked sideways, knowing that I was caught, that I was screwed. There was the neighbour, the man of the house - medium height, medium build, sandy-haired, bespectacled: the classic serial killer look - and behind him his awful wife, a grinning woman in a red dress.

I slipped into full-on normal-guy mode without skipping a beat. I smiled casually and raised my eyebrows, seeking to convey two things: that I was normal and sociable (hence the casual smile); and that I was aware that we hadn't met yet, and was thus acknowledging the surprise, almost ad hoc nature of this encounter (hence the raised eyebrows). It was a complicated thing that I was trying to convey. So many shades of meaning, so much multi-layered wryness and mock-bemusement. I don't know how successful I was. All that I said was: "Oh. Hello. How's it going?"

The man said, "Okay," looking askance at the house he and the missus had just moved into. (I've heard nothing but hammering, sawing, and drilling sounds through the walls for a month.) The wife, mercifully, did nothing but smile continuously.

"See you, then," I said. I had expertly (if I may say so myself; and I think that I may) taken my housekey from my pocket, inserted it into the lock, turned it, and opened the door, all in one fluid motion occupying no more than three seconds of realtime. I was inside and locking the door behind me before he'd had a chance to respond.

Yes, I was careless, getting caught like that out in the open. But for the collapsing supermarket carrier bag, I would have had my wits about me, and seen from afar that the neighbours were outside their door and in prime position to intercept me. I would then have been able to take evasive action, i.e. walk quickly in the opposite direction, wait for the coast to clear, and sneak back.

It's a system I have been perfecting my whole adult life. It's not perfect. But then, what system is?