Inefficiency

Warning, this isn't the most interesting topic I've ever rambled on about. Is shall try not to turn this in to a rant, for the musing that it has come from was not a rant, merely a collection of thoughts I wish to share. My thought is this: being alone is not sensible. My thought was a not about how it is not good for me (or anyone for that matter, maybe I should start to write about the things "one" does?) to be alone in terms of emotional or social matters, but about how it is just not practical.

As ever it is the need to feed one's self (off I go then) that brought me to this conclusion. Being semi isolated exaggerates patterns that exist in the Real World, and gives me the space to notice them. Quarter past nine at night and I'm hungry, I can tell by the exact location of the unhappiness in my tummy and the fact I'm feeling grumpy and hard done by with no logical focus. So I wander back to the caravan thinking about how I would set about fixing this. Toast, I think. No, using the grill on the gas stove inside sets off the fire alarm, and using the outside stove after dark just becomes a moth massacre. Anything left over from tea? No again. I settled for a traditional jam sandwich in the end, which might not quite fill the whole, but there's not room left for a whole other one. I live my life in units of 1 1/2, you see.

All the while I'm thinking. I'm hungry because tonight's tea has done a half-hearted job. Tonight's tea was some egg noodles, babycorn, my last two mushrooms and the first three leaves of a cabbage. Food would be much more exciting if there was someone else for me to feed as well as little old me. Tonight's choice was dictated by the need to eat the second half of packet of noodles - reduced to clear and not going to last any longer. Sold in a size that two people would eat for one meal, or one person would eat for two. Tomorrow I'll need to finish the babycorn before it grows legs and leads a mutiny - even if that makes it four days in a row. I'll now be eating cabbage all this week and next, for it takes a single person rather a while to get through a whole cabbage. Variety is not for the lonely, says Mr Tesco. Before I get a bunch of comments about starving children in Africa, this an observation, I shall point out, not a complaint. I quite like cabbage.

Then we have the effort involved in the cooking. A meal for one takes a number of cooking implements and a length off time. Cooking the same meal for two (provided you're going to sit down and eat it together) is unlikely to take more pans and utensils, and unlikely to take too much longer, certainly not twice as long. Same goes for the gas I'm cooking on. Ergo, compare me on my own to the couple sharing the other caravan. They do twice the work I do but don't use twice the resources. Single living is inefficient.

I've known this from the other side. Sharing everything doesn't leave you with half of what you had, you still have everything, but those things become twice as useful, but you hold them less tight.