The hermit

I make the decision to come off Twitter on a Sunday night. It’s not a spur of the moment thing, but a growing discomfort with the stream of consciousness I’m throwing at a crowd of largely faceless people. A lot of it is spiteful or unkind, something which comes easily to me in a superficial, low-risk medium like that. Will those feelings now find other outlets by which they can bubble to the surface, or do they only really exist because they are so easy to vent? I realise I have no idea, decide I’d quite like to find out.

In my mind, it’s like some kind of holiday; getting away from it all, just me and my thoughts. It’s strange how over time it has become so natural to broadcast so much, such a creeping thing that I don’t think I’ve ever stopped to consider whether it was right to hand away small pieces of myself so frequently to anyone who was interested, whatever their agenda. And I realise, too, that by contrast I put so much thought into what I write here and what pieces of myself I give away in my “proper” writing. I’m not sure what effect the one has on the other, and I decide I’d quite like to find that out too.

I could be a twenty-first century hermit, perhaps.

I’ve seen plenty of other people leave Twitter, and I’ve watched these things play out carefully enough to know that when people make a big grandstanding exit it’s because they want people to notice and beg them not to go. They invariably return within days, either because people have implored them to or because they are miffed that nobody has registered their absence, or because they were lying to themselves and can’t cope without it.

By contrast, I make my final entry on Twitter nicely non-committal. I don’t say when I’ll be back, because I don’t know, and I don’t say I’ll never be back, because I certainly don’t know that. While I’m typing it, I think of my mother and brother, people I no longer speak to, checking my Twitter feed and building up a picture of me from bits and pieces that I’ve said, taking the parts that fit with what they want to believe. I remember the mail from my mother suggesting that I have a drink problem, and that I should consider doing voluntary work. Then I remember my aunt, the previous weekend, coming round for dinner. I asked after my mother and the mood in the room curdled. “I don’t want to talk about that.” she said, clearly uncomfortable. “It’s just that… I can’t.” Those ties are severed, and yet my whereabouts and reactions to everything everyday are a matter of public record.

I finish the wording. It reads like a sign on the door; I’m gone, I’ll be back later and people can email me if they want me. The words come out of me as easily as pulling a plug out of the socket, and I don’t go back to check if there is a response.

The next day, I find my fingers twitching when various things happen. Something will annoy me at work, or a noteworthy detail will jump out at me and my instinct is to reach into my pocket and grab my phone, like a gunfighter who doesn’t know he’s retired.

At work Iain tells me about the kittens his wife is picking up that afternoon. He strikes me as a dog person - devoted, unconditionally friendly, seeing the best in everyone - but he says that his wife has her heart set on them, and he can’t refuse her. They are calling them Buzz and Jessie, because his son is a huge Toy Story fan.

“Iain, promise me you’re going to go home and call one of the kittens Randy instead.”

“Why?” says Iain. The prospect of interfering with the natural order, where his wife makes the decisions, or all the decisions they don’t let the children make, is unthinkable.

“What’s your wife’s maiden name?”

“Guy.”

“Exactly. How can you deprive your son of a porn star name like Randy Guy? Imagine how popular he’ll be when they first have those conversations at school.”

Iain properly loses it, and proceeds to guffaw loudly for several minutes with his head in his hands on the desk, to the extent where my boss looks over briefly in exasperation before going back to a very important email. I feel my phone gently burning in my pocket again, but I am finding it much easier to be strong than I thought I would.

The security guard in Sainsburys when I walk through at the end of the day is a swarthy white man sporting a moustache - as so many security guards do - and immaculate in his v-neck jumper and peaked cap. His name badge says Zoltan; I’ve walked past him dozens of times and never noticed that. He doesn’t look like a Zoltan, and I feel like a Zoltan should be plotting world domination or imprisoning maidens, rather than wearily patrolling by the self-service checkouts. Maybe one of his evil schemes was defeated, or maybe somewhere there is a criminal mastermind called Derek wondering if he is in the wrong job. And I want to tell the world, or that small section of the world that would read what I say on Twitter, but I don’t. I make a mental note instead, and think there must be other, better ways to tell stories than that.

At night Kelly and I cook dinner in our tiny kitchen, the radio on in the background. The onions sizzle on the hob as she finishes the washing up and I add pinches of chilli and garlic, listen to the tinkling of risotto rice being weighed out on the scales.

“Aren’t you sorry that I’m not on Twitter at the moment? I bloody hate this radio programme, and you’re the only one who knows it.”

I’m not sure whether the look I get from Kelly is meant to convey that she feels lucky, or unlucky, or a bit of both. I add it to the list of things I’d quite like to find out, which is becoming quite a long list, but I keep it to myself.