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the couplesome strangers Derek and Jo need only exchange a private hostile glance over the sage derby and I start to panic on their behalf. It is not happy, this Derek-and-Jo; it will split up; its Derek-and-Jo kiddies will suffer. I turn into a kind of Cassandra, prophesying the sooner-or-later catastrophe of Derek-and-Jo with a forlorn certainty, usually even before they have reached the front gate and started arguing.
    It is a heavy burden: to see the inevitable with such clarity. ‘See the cracks!’ I moan inwardly (after some ritual ‘who’s driving?’ fracas after pudding). ‘Oh, woe! Hear the marital fabric split and rend, stitch by stitch verily from top to bottom! Weep, ye marrieds! Weep!’ It is an odd way to behave in a Crouch End dining room, but of course nobody listens anyway. Or if they do, they probably put it down to personal disappointment.
    This fatalism seems to be the worst aspect of being single; it gives you a cranky view of the world. You have heard of ex-hippies who advocate trepanning as the answer to everything (drill a hole in your skull to let off steam)? Well, I am quite similar, only I think everyone must tear up the marriage lines or sell the double bed, or for
heaven’s sake quit moaning.
As you can imagine, this makes me pretty useless as an adviser when relationships hit stormy seas, since my suggestions are always equally radical and precisely the same.
    ‘I think he’s seeing another woman, but I can’t believe it’s true,’ sobs a friend, desperate for support. ‘Split up,’ I advise,promptly, ‘and make sure you get the tumble drier.’ ‘I am in such turmoil,’ says another. ‘My wife wants to have a baby and the idea makes me dream about being eaten alive by a big hairy mouth with teeth in it.’ ‘Mmm,’ I say thoughtfully. ‘Have you considered going your separate ways?’ On Radio 4’s comedy news programme
On the Hour
the other day, I heard: ‘A palace spokesman has today confirmed that Prince Harry is to split up,’ and I automatically thought ‘Good idea; best thing’ before seeing the joke.
    The thing is, coupledom is a bit like childbirth; a week after it’s finished, you can’t imagine what it was like, or how you got into it. This is the gulf between single people and couples, and between the different bits of one’s own life. One minute you are Derek-and-Jo; the next you are Derek
or
Jo. And in each state you can’t imagine the other. I have spent about 80 per cent of my adult life in proper committed long-term relationships, yet at the moment all I can clearly remember is that I once startled my boyfriend by asking, out of the blue: ‘Why aren’t you a pony?’
    This ‘Why don’t they split up?’ syndrome is not sour grapes, I promise. It is not even cynicism. It is just an unanswerable point of view, similar to a religious conviction. The only trouble with this particular panacea (like trepanning) is that once you have done it, you can’t do it again. Consequently its evangelists cannot follow their own advice. What do trepanners do when they are depressed? If they kept drilling holes in their heads, they would risk being mistaken for patio strawberry-planters.
    Similarly, once you have split up you can’t keep doing it, unless of course you are a simple organism like an amoeba. So it is quite ironic, really. Here I am, advocating the new revolutionary pluck-it-out, cut-and-run approach to personal happiness, while at home I am gradually learning how to patch things up.

    One of the more difficult things to accept about being newly single is that there is no one to strike chore-bargains with. You know the sort of thing: ‘If you do the breakfast, I’ll take the bin out’; ‘I’ll get the milk, you get the papers.’ Make such fair’s-fair suggestions to a cat, I find, and it will just look preoccupied, and suddenly remember an urgent appointment outside.
    The beauty of efficient teamwork is that it cuts through the grease and