Home at forty nine, knowing four people and none of them from this

Eleven years in another country, a career that went well, and a return in January to a city where I know four people and not one of them from any of this. I had somehow assumed the same faces would still be here. That was extremely stupid of me and I would like the record to show that I have noticed.

Forty nine, the city centre. If you add up the actual years of doing this it comes to about nine, all of them a long time ago. What has changed most is not anybody's technique. It is how people talk to each other before anything happens, which is far more direct than it was, and much better, and which I have had to learn from scratch like a man taking up a language in middle age.

The awkward part is standing. Everything about how this city works assumes somebody can vouch for you. Nobody can vouch for me. I am effectively a new arrival carrying a decade of old habits, and the honest move seems to be saying so rather than trading on a past that nobody here remembers.

What I want is one partner over a long stretch. I am in no hurry, I have nowhere in particular to be, and at forty nine I would far rather spend six months getting one thing right than a year meeting people.

The eleven years were mostly airports and I will not be telling anybody about them at length. Ask me what I am like on a Tuesday instead.