Arrived in January, and I can count everyone I know on one hand

I can name four people in this city and two of them are colleagues. I arrived in January, on my own, for a job, and the thing nobody tells you about moving somewhere at twenty seven is that you can be perfectly happy and completely unattached at the same time, and not notice the second part for months.

Out west, in a furnished flat with somebody else's pictures on the walls. Five years of rope from where I lived before and not one evening of it here.

What is odd is that this is meant to be the easy city for it. Everybody says so. And people have been open, and friendly, and I still have no idea how you get from friendly to knowing somebody. I suspect the answer is boring, and consists of time and turning up repeatedly, and I am impatient in a way that is not going to be of any help to me here.

What I want is a partnership rather than an introduction to a scene. One person, two evenings, over the long stretch. I am here indefinitely, as far as anybody here is, and I would rather build one thing properly than meet thirty people once each.

I am aware that being new is interesting to nobody except me. I have put it at the top anyway, because it explains why my answer to almost any question about this city is going to be that I do not know yet.