"No guns, notice this a safe neighbourhood/where everything is okay and alright and all that " An emissary from the Comfort Zone

I'm young, I'm fresh, I'm a nervous wreck. I've been back in York a total of about 25 hours and it already feels like my mind has been filled with the kind of mineral-wool-insulation material that the leaflets sent to me by my slumlord keep going on about.

Being a mere mile or so from where I was previously ensconced and a similar distance from the more distinguished areas, I seem to have holed myself into Eborian suburbia.

Examples

• I've just seen four different paper boys cycle down our road.
• People leave their bikes and lawnmowers in the front garden.
• A woman's dog leapt out of the house barking at me, but didn't try to dine on my trachea.
• There has only been one person being taught to drive on our road so far.
• All the food seems to be delivered by Tesco/Sainsbury vans, except for one fellow who seems to have found a supermarket so utterly inaccessible to me I've never even heard of it. The driver could well have been described as wearing livery.

The result of this crime-free comfortable non-threatening utopia, with bills not included? I'm jumpy as hell. The fact that the place is silent at night is disconcerting enough, but during the day you don't even get traffic. I'm also prone to getting lost and staring off into space. The cotton wool is either being funnelled into my eyes and ears or out of them, like some kind of fluffy exchange. I feel like I'm wearing one of those isolation bubbles, but inside out.