Solitary confinement

Mine, all mine… I have sole occupancy of TC Towers for the next week, and I am thoroughly looking forward to it. Don’t get me wrong, I like my housemates very much, but there is something about having 100%, irrevocably uninterruptable access to the entire place which is genuinely appealing. I can watch what I want, when I want; use the computer at will; have a bath without prior warning; chat on the phone for hours on end. And all of these, without a stitch of clothing on, if I so desire. Not that I would; merely having the freedom to engage in such anti-social behaviour is sufficient in itself.

For I remain unconvinced that man is a social animal; or perhaps it’s just that our ancestors never had to engage in subtle and largely implicit negotiation over who gets to watch what on the video. The way it seems to work in TC Towers (with the obvious caveat that my housemates’ may see it totally differently), is a complex dance of polite diplomacy and tolerance. If person X is watching a show/film/barbed-wire deathmatch when Y enters the room, X can finish watching it. However, if Y is still there at the end, X should include Y in discussion over the next item. If neither has any specific choice, X may provide a short-list of possibilities, from which Y shall select, or vice-versa.

Given the above, you can see why I am looking forward to going home and simply slapping on Brawlin’ Broads, or any of the other titles unlikely to make it off the short-list when the rest of the inhabitants are around. I have even done my level best to clear the social diary for the week, so I can make the most of this opportunity for glorious isolation — it’ll be a bit like a solo version of Big Brother, with fewer cameras. This should mean a significant drop in the unwatched backlog (currently sitting at 15 tapes, 9 laser-discs and 3 DVDs), as I rip through the less housemate-friendly titles.

This will mean a back seat for my other favourite indoor pursuit, since it can be done privately, in my own room… No, I mean working on the computer, of course – what did you think I meant? Admittedly, the new TC hasn’t been receiving the attention it should have lately (at least on the design and layout front – I continue writing apace) but I am working on the site, specifically, “enhanced” versions of the Incredibly Bad Film Show series going all the way back to TC 0. And you try finding pictures from Revenge of the Teenage Vixens from Outer Space. This is why it’s instead far more likely is that I will continue beating my brains out against the immensely irritating LMA football management sim on the Playstation. I suspect this game may be a cunning device, engineered by TC’s enemies to prevent me continuing to subvert the population at large.

This week, however, they needn’t bother. I’ll be locking the Playstation away in a cupboard, perhaps the same one as the cooking utensils – with my heavy-on-the-microwavey diet, it’ll be severely out of mind there. Perhaps now would be a good opportunity to try out that long-planned experiment as to whether M&M’s and out-of-date Twinkies are sufficient to sustain human life. Sadly, I’ll still have to come to work, but that doesn’t really count as social interaction: maybe I should take a vow of silence and see whether anyone notices.

And so, I retreat, pausing only to shave my head and don the cassock belonging to the Holy Order of the Happy Hermit. If I’m not back next week, send in a SWAT team.