Twenty minutes out and people speak about it as though it were abroad
- Looking for
- somebody realistic about a journey they will actually be making weekly
- Experience
- Nine years, two arrangements, both with people from town.
- Around
- Stockport, Manchester
I am twenty minutes from the middle of town on a good evening and half an hour on a bad one, and the number of people who talk about that as though it required a passport is remarkable. Meanwhile the same people will happily cross the city in the other direction because the app told them it was four miles.
Distance here is not measured in miles and it is not really measured in minutes either. It is measured in whether a journey feels like part of your ordinary life or like an expedition, and that is a story people tell themselves before they have made the trip once.
Forty four, Stockport, dominant, nine years in. Both of my arrangements were with people who lived in town, and both worked, because I did most of the travelling and said so at the start.
That is still the offer. I have a car, my own place, no shared walls that matter, and I will do the majority of the moving about. What I would ask is that it gets noticed once, out loud, rather than repaid.
What I want is an ongoing arrangement with a fixed evening and reporting between. Not looking for anybody who wants to see how it goes. Not looking for a person who will make the trip once, for the novelty.