The Moon and I: a guide to living alone

Recently, I put “UK dating sites” into a search engine and came up with over 3 million hits. This set me thinking. Supposing there are about 100 people on the books of every dating agency, then there are over 300 million people in the UK looking for a partner – strange in a territory that has a population of just over 64 million – do people looking for partners somehow mysteriously reproduce themselves in cyberspace? Yes, yes – I know that many people will be on the books of more than one agency, and that not all of those links I found will refer to an actual agency. Still, when you think that not every person who is looking for a partner is registered with any dating agency, and reproduce the UK numbers on a global scale, you are coming up with an astronomical number of subjects. Surely, living alone (and being happy with it) can’t be that unusual. I decided to do these folks a favour, and write my own personal guide to surviving alone, in all areas of life. Eating Alone It’s not difficult to eat alone, not the least because you decide what to eat and when to eat it. If you must be in company, try setting up mirror in front of your place setting or a portrait photo of a loved one – but do not use the photo of someone from whom you are “in recovery”. For further tips on this activity watch the scene from the movie The Sixth Sense, where the bereaved Anna marks her wedding anniversary by dining alone in a swanky restaurant - yes, it can be done. Sleeping Alone Like eating, this is not only not difficult, but a great pleasure if you do it in style. Buy the best you can afford of everything; bed, duvet, bedding, jammies, bedside rug and so on, and it’s wall-to-wall comfort, all night long. No wrestling over sheets and covers; you decide when to go asleep and when to wake up, you become king or queen of that six-foot square for those glorious eight hours of nod. And insomniacs can witness the beauty of the sunrise without the misery of a snoring, grunting uber-contented entity for company. Bathing Alone To do this, take one good bathroom and a decent, bath-sized apparatus. Fill bath with a liquid of your choice: water, champagne or asses’ milk. Get into bath and relax for four hours. Remember, the solitary subject need have no worries over staying in the bath for too long. Living Alone Many people regard this scenario with horror, but being the monarch of all you survey brings huge advantages – see “eating alone” and “sleeping alone”, above. What is more, a prolonged period of solitude is often the prelude to a grand, creative career. The possibilities are endless; blogging, novel-writing, composing music, painting, meditating…really, the sky is the limit.