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

[cardinalsin.livejournal.com]

I don't understand why you've excluded situations where you ring to check they're in. I always ring ahead, even if only five minutes beforehand. I guess I might not bother if I had friends within, say, a one-minute walk; but anything longer than that and I want to be confident they'll be there. In fact, even when I was in college I usually rang ahead (on internal phones!), unless I was just trawling rooms for company, in which case I'd be almost guaranteed to eventually find someone.

I guess this means I don't pop?

[venta.livejournal.com]

I don't have a very good reason for excluding that case - it just seems slightly different to me, and part of my question was to do with how you do (or would) deal with people showing up unexpectedly.

I guess ringing five minutes ahead is also something I never do - I rarely arrange to visit/meet up with someone on spec, so if I'm ringing it's more likely to be to say "do you want to do X next Sunday?" rather than "are you visitable?"

[cardinalsin.livejournal.com]

I don't do that much either, but it has happened on occasion, and if my life wasn't so ludicrously booked up it might happen more.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Mm, it seems a bit otiose to ring someone up to see if you can call on them for an idle chat: by that point, you might as well have the idle chat on the phone.

[cardinalsin.livejournal.com]

Not really - it's saying "I would like to come round for a chat but I wanted to check you weren't busy/in the bath/etc". Why would you call someone for an idle chat on the phone if they only lived a couple of roads away?

[triskellian]

secretrebel and I do this all the time, both with and without the "can I come over?" Sometimes we start the call with "can I come over?", agree that we're going to meet, and then keep chatting on the phone until one of us points out that we should save some things to say in person ;-)

venta: I don't pop any more, although I did as a student first time around (and I can report that students no longer stick pieces of paper to their doors). An Australian friend of mine used 'pop' once to refer to coming over at an arranged time, for an evening, which surprised me; I think his requirement for 'popping' was that it be very close, rather than that it be unannounced.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Sure, but once you're actually talking to them on the phone, it would be weird to actively refrain from idle chat. Unless you are the type who likes their outbursts of spontaneity to be very carefully planned.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Not at all - talking to someone who's physically present is fun, talking to someone on the phone (largely) isn't. I don't like phone conversations, and will never ring someone up "for a chat" (unless convention means I should, because they will think it rude otherwise).

Although I appreciate it's just differing attitudes your comments above seem as obtuse to me as someone who thinks that after looking at all those pictures of groceries on tesco.com there's no point actually ordering real food :)

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

To me it seems more like: if you're browsing tesco.com anyway, you might as well order your food from there; there's no point also physically going into Tesco's ;-)

(I quite like chatting on the phone though, am happy to do so for hours at a stretch. Maybe that's unusual.)