Three hours of travel for two hours of rope, every Thursday

Door to door it is an hour and twenty each way on a good night. I finish work, get the train, change once, walk, get tied for two hours, then do the whole thing backwards and let myself in around midnight. Most Thursdays for two years. I want to be honest that it has begun to wear.

Twenty seven, out in the commuter belt, shop work with a rota that lands a fortnight ahead. I am not asking anyone to move house. I am asking for someone who will look at that journey and read it as a real cost rather than as proof of how keen I am.

The person I saw for eighteen months was lovely about everything except this. He genuinely could not see why I arrived tired, because for him the evening started when I came through the door and finished when I left. By the end I was doing all of the travelling and all of the apologising for being late, and it came apart over a timetable rather than over anything either of us actually felt.

What I want is somebody closer in, or somebody who will come out this way sometimes, or somebody who will say plainly at the start that they never will. Any of those three is workable. The one that is not workable is a promise made in month one that quietly expires in month five.

Not after anything occasional. A regular evening, the same night, with one person, for a long time. And not after anyone who thinks living out here is a personality trait rather than a rent decision.