Up and down the City Road, in and out The Eagle

[venta]

First, let me define soemthing: by popping round to see someone, I mean dropping by and knocking on their door without having formerly arranged to do so, and without having phoned ahead to check they're in and available.

Last year, j4 and addedentry moved into a house a few doors away from the one I was living in. "Pop round and see us", they said. Righty-oh, I said.

And I intended to. But when I was next in possession of a free evening, I found myself in the grip of crippling social anxiety: what if I went round, but they were busy, or had friends round, or were just planning a nice quiet evening in by themselves ?

Now, the obvious answer to any of the above is that they would probably have politely said this, and I would have trundled the 17 seconds or so home again. And despite my rational brain being well aware of this, I couldn't quite persuade myself that it was really true. I had lost my ability to pop :(

(Incidentally, my apologies to J4 and AddedEntry - the crippling social anxiety is in no way a function of their good selves, they are merely convenient examples :)

When I was a student, I would frequently wander round to someone else's house - and people frequently wandered round to mine. At some point - in my life, at least - this just tailed off. I know that this may in part be due to my pernicious habit of being out a lot; I remember people complaining that there was no point popping round to visit, as I was never in.

However, I think it's a wider phenomenon. Many people just don't pop. Many people, perhaps, don't live within convenient popping distance of friends any more - I realise I'm unusually lucky having three households I could visit within walking distance, despite living in London. Possibly four, actually, if I had more of an idea where frax and cardinalsin dwell.

I wonder that - being older - we just have more complicated lives. You can largely assume that a student won't be doing anything very important (they're students, for goodness' sake). They're likely to be at home. They'll probably the glad of the company. As a side note, a colleague informs me that popping incidence increases with the arrival of a baby; although a new parent is doing something important, they're also quite likely to be at home, and quite likely to be glad of another sentient being to talk to.

So... do you pop ? Would you like to, and do you live sufficiently close to people for it to be possible ? Would you be surprised if someone arrived on your doorstep unannounced ? Pleased ? Would you be comfortable telling them to go away if you were busy ?

Comments

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

It has never occurred to me to do this. If I want to talk to somebody I see if they are online, or send them a text message to see if they are available. If I am bored I do something on my enormous and solitary to-do list and do not even think of talking to people as a leisure activity. I think this is one of the ways my social rules are different from the rest of the world's, like how other people email their friends just for a chat. I wouldn't mind people popping round to see me (ha ha as if that happens when my friends are 100 miles away) but it just never comes up on the list of options when I think to myself, what should I do now?

[venta.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I wonder, I wonder: perhaps there is a slight age-gap at issue here (I'm slightly hazy about how old you are, but I think you're a bit younger than me - I'm currently 33).

When I was at university, virtually no one I knew had a mobile phone, so texting was out. Relatively few people had landlines in their university rooms. In the early days at university, a lot of people hadn't really bothered with getting email accounts - and even those who did have them had to go to university computer rooms and queue to pick up their mail. Quite literally the most sensible way of getting hold of someone to organise socialising was to go to visit - and while you're there, you might as well stop for a cup of tea if they weren't busy. If they weren't there, you left a note on the piece of paper they would have left stuck on the outside of their door (do students even bother with this now? I guess it's totally redundant...)

I guess by the time I left university mobiles were becoming fairly common, as were ethernet connections to student rooms, or dial-up at home for normal people, so the way of student life I knew might not be familiar to anyone even just a few years younger.

[lnr]

*nods* In our college they had little noticeboards by the bedroom doors for just this purpose - Phil next door to me in my first year always had the best messages :) I didn't get a mobile until several years later, although I was definitely a late adopter, and very few people had internet in their rooms while I was there.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Ooh, get you, we hade to roll our own with bits of A4 and blu-tac :)

And a pencil, which you had to tie to the door or some bugger would filch it...

[lnr]

Don't worry, we still had to provide our own paper and writing implements and drawing pins.

[uitlander]

We had a college provided hook. The convention was to leave a notepad hanging there with a pen/pencil attached.

The year I changed my name-plate to Portia Wellington-Stuart various friends got rather carried away with it all, and as far as I could tell Porty was having a whale of a time running around town with the 'in crowd' and spending most weekends at Hunt Balls.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

I still have some of my old door sheets, in fact. Some of the stuff on there is pretty good! (Very few of the scrawlings were real messages. It was more a kind of improvised comedy medium for passers-by!)

[mister-jack.livejournal.com]

That's very good point - popping was a lot more necessary pre-mobile.

I don't pop these days; although I think I probably would if I lived closer to my friends or passed them on the way to/from places.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Indeed. Although I hadn't really computed it when I posted this earlier, unless you just happen to be walking past someone's door and are suddenly struck by inspiration, why wouldn't you call/text ahead to ask/warn of your impendingness ?

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

I think you are right. We had notepads on our doors still, but I think they might die out soon due to the prevalence of random strangers writing sexist abuse all over them.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Oh. That's very disappointing. I think in my 3 years of living-in-halls and having paper on my door, I had one remark written by someone I didn't know (and even then it was a comment on something someone had left outside my door, not abuse). Maybe I was just lucky.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I should add that these days I'd mostly do the same as you: text someone or look online. I was only blathering about student days because I think it's the time that formed the way I view the idea of popping to visit people.

[sea-of-flame.livejournal.com]

By the time I started at uni, a lot of us /had/ mobile phones (lots of student bank accounts gave away PAYG nokia bricks when you signed up) - but they were cripplingly expensive to use (40-50p per minute...think of the beer that could buy!), and reception was poor to nonexistent in a lot of college buildings - so calling people tended to be limited to 'help I'm locked out' conversations!