Meeting the Neighbours

I met some neighbours the other day, I met their cat and paused to say hello.  Since the neighbours turned up hard on their cat's paws common politeness demanded that I say at least as much as I said to their cat.  I'm pleased to record that my neighbours also behaved in an appropriate matter.  They didn't introduce themselves, providing names I would then have to forget nor did they make impertinent inquiries about the state of my health.  Rather, they introduced the cat.  His (or possibly her, we didn't get as far as gender allocation) name is Spooky.

Spooky is a plumpish black cat with a white underbelly.  He (or she) has a little grey around the muzzle and is definitely not a kitten any more.  I can't really describe the neighbours although I think one of them is female.  Which by logical inference tells you that one isn't.  As long as I'm either correct or incorrect about both those assumptions my conclusion still stands.

With feline introductions concluded to the satisfaction of all none of us felt the need to hang around, not even Spooky who fled inside the neighbours apartment, so we went our separate ways.  It's rare to have such a satisfying interaction with other human beings and I'm positively looking forward to seeing them again which I predict will happen in six to eight months time when Spooky gets out onto the landing again.

When did people lose their disinterest in others?  I blame social media.  Suddenly everybody is following everybody else and hanging on every hundred and forty characters dropped by the objects of their obsession as if they were holy writ.  What happened to the days when you could encounter someone with a fist growing out of their head in the street and just give a polite nod and keep on walking?  Nowadays one can't even retire to a nightclub toilet cubicle for a brief tryst with a recently met acquaintance without somebody uploading a video of it to the internet.  Seriously guys, some discretion please.  If those involved had wanted their activities to be public they would have done it on the dancefloor.

It might be better if this upsurge of interest in people's behaviour was accompanied by an interest in people themselves but it hasn't.  Polite disinterest has been replaced by morbid curiosity and the assumption that your opinion on what is going on is of vast interest to anybody actually involved.  Here's a tip; if you aren't part of the solution stop being so bloody fascinated with the problem.  And don't like people's twitter feeds, it only encourages them.

Reading blog posts is perfectly fine of course.