When I lived in NY, apartments were small and most of us met our friends and lived our lives in the public sphere. There were things about that that I liked, I confess. And it’s certainly what happens in many parts of the world.

But I lived in a friendly building, and we were in and out of one another’s apartments. It’s true we were young, but it was also part of the tradition. You visited. Growing up, I was certainly in and out of friends’ houses, even if I was mostly in the kitchen.

And perhaps some of the sanctity of the castle for me has developed because I have no children to have friends to run in and out…  But it seems we entertain less than we used to… our houses are closed because so many of us live in the suburbs and drive into our garages. We don’t sit on porches, we sit on decks.

Do you, I wonder, know the heart of me if you’re never in my house? Do I know the heart of you? Does the feeling of being at home on the internet make us unlikely to dust and fluff and invite someone in for a cuppa with their feet propped on our coffee tables? Do we invite each other into our Peaceful Kingdoms? Do we create Peaceful kingdoms if we never plan to invite anyone in?

And if we don’t, does that change, not only how we interact, but also who we are? I wonder…