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?’ I remember a woman once proudly describing to me how she had rescued herself from acute self-consciousness by assembling a library of pop psychology books, with titles such as
101 Ways Not To Care What Other People Think.
The effect of these books had been miraculous she said; she had been transformed into someone who did not give a damn. I was impressed, and asked her to check the publishing details. ‘Oh, but I threw them all out, in the end,’ she said in a lowered voice. ‘I mean, what if I died and people came in and found a load of books with titles like those?’

    The day that I became single again – some time last August – I felt it was important to perform some symbolic acts. After all, I reasoned, you never know when a social anthropologist might be watching. I tried to picture what a newly single woman would be expected to do, to mark the reclaiming of the living environment after years of cohabitation. Washing the walls and beating the carpets sounded the right kind of thing – but on the other hand it also sounded a bit strenuous, and I didn’t want to alarm the cats.
    So perhaps, instead, the newly single woman might do a little light tidying? Form the old newspapers into distinct new piles? Pick up the dusty used tissue that she always stared at,mindlessly, through hour-long telephone conversations? This all seemed manageable, given the emotional circumstances. Oh yes, and she might ceremoniously replace the lavatory seat to its ‘down’ position, with an exaggerated flourish and a round of applause. This was ample
Coming of Age in Samoa
stuff for a single afternoon.
    But I remember that the first evening I was also moved to root through a heap of books until I found Anthony Storr’s
Solitude.
This was a book I had wanted to read for a very long time; and I felt I should seize the moment. I read it avidly until 9.30pm, after which I left it unopened on the coffee table for the next three months, hoping that some of its inspiring message would miraculously buoy my spirit. I don’t know why I stopped reading. People must have thought I was a real stoic, savouring a book called
Solitude
over such a long period. Either that, of course, or that I couldn’t read without moving my lips.
    Storr thinks that solitude has much to recommend it. He says it promotes creativity – making people write novels, and so forth. Look at Anita Brookner, Edward Gibbon and, er, many, many others. Interestingly, a large proportion of our philosophers turn out to have been lonely miserable gits who walked about wearing buckets on their heads.
    There was something wrong with the appeal of this argument, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Months later, however, I do still hold out hope that the novel-writing and world-class philosophy stage will bounce along nicely when the time is right. I have bought a few note-pads, just in case. And a cardigan. The only trouble is that at the moment I can’t seem to pass a rather more mundane stage in the experience of solitude. I can’t seem to overcome my excitement at being able (at long last) to listen to
The Archers
without having to do it in the shed.
    I never accepted the idea that ‘love means never having tosay you’re sorry’. In my own case, love invariably means never being allowed to listen to
The Archers
– and in fact saying ‘Oops, sorry, I’ll turn it off then, shall I?’ when discovered in the guilty act. I kept faith with
The Archers
during three solid years of strict prohibition, just waiting for the day when I could again turn the theme tune up to maximum volume, as a statement: ‘Yes, I love
The Archers,
and I’m proud.’
    My fanaticism may have been forced underground, but it remained resilient, like the French Resistance. I take this as living proof that inside every cohabiting person there is a single person humming ‘Dum de dum de dum de dum’ waiting to get out.
    The more I think about it, the more I impress myself – the clever