A few weeks ago I was abroad with a group of people from my company, I knew 3 of the 10 others. We went out to dinner - Awful time, very stressful. Later in the

A few weeks ago I was abroad with a group of people from my company, I knew 3 of the 10 others. We went out to dinner - Awful time, very stressful. Later in the week it had dropped to 3 other people, only 1 whom I knew, far better. (The other nights I had room service - that's the best situation, I can actually relax) That said, I'm happy to Make grunting noises and guesticulatr at milk bottles to the occasional stranger in a shared office kitchen. I guess part of the problem is it takes me a long time to remember a person's face - when watching tv I rely a lot on context. My wife often says "no that's not xxx, he's got the wrong colour hair". I've been known to get skin colour and sex wrong too, but most of the time context works. Took me about 2 seasons to remember the names of the 6 main characters in "friends". When making tea, there's no context to build on. At university I wrote down names of people on my floor in halls, which mostly helped. At school I'd learnt the names of everyone in the class by the middle of the second year, and by year 6 knew about 80% of the c. 120 people in the year group. My children's friends are mostly a blur but I can get 4 or 5 of them with a little confidence - that's after 16 months. In person conversations are far too draining, especially without context, and when there's nothing to gain what's the point?