You're Old, I'm Old . . . Get Used to It!

by Virginia Ironside

  Now we could learn from him. When it comes to being an old bore, he really takes the cake.

  15. Alone Again

  I thrive best on solitude. If I have had a companion only one day in a week, unless it were one or two I could name, I find that the value of the week to me has been seriously affected. It dissipates my days, and often it takes me another week to get over it . . .

  I do not know if I am singular when I say that I believe there is no man with whom I can associate who will not, comparatively speaking, spoil my afternoon.

  —Henry Thoreau, Journal

  NOW ONE THING is absolutely certain. Either you’re on your own, or you’re “in a relationship,” as they say. And even then, unless of course you die first or both drive off a cliff in the same car, you’ll be alone at some point in your life. Even if you’ve had a marriage as long as Lord Longford’s, there will be a time, after death has come knocking, when one or the other in a partnership has got to live by themselves. It can be a scary thought, particularly if you’ve been with someone else for years.

  And yet being alone, though not easy, is not the end of the world.

  I am here not to point out the drawbacks, of which there are myriad—including, of course, tremendous feelings of isolation— but rather to highlight just a few things that are nice about being on your own. And a few thoughts on how to stop screaming in agony if loneliness comes up and bites you in the heart.

  The Pleasure of Not Having Someone Else Around

  I had a small party of about twenty-five people recently and, as she said good-bye, a friend added, “I so enjoyed myself. It was such a success. And do you know why? There were no couples.”

  She was right. There were two gay couples, and two people who’d only just started living together, but there were no actual couply couples, people who have grown into each other like ivy into a tree.

  I hasten to add that most of my couply friends seem, amazingly, to remain individuals in their own right, even after years of marriage, but I’ve met some of the ivy/tree variety. Couples who go shopping in the supermarket together every Saturday. Couples who, when they go out to a dinner party of several people, insist on Sitting Next to Each Other. Worse are those couples who are so intertwined that what started years ago as private bickering has now become public. The ones who call each other “darling” all the time. People who individually are delightful, kind, and funny, and who turn into squalling monsters when they’re combined.

  “I think you’re wrong, darling,” says one to the other. “It was Wednesday.” “No, love of my life, it’s you who’ve got it wrong. It was Thursday.” “I hate to contradict, sweetie,” replies the other. “But you’re getting a teensy weensy bit muddly-upply in your oldie agie. I know it was Wednesday.” “Don’t you muddly-upply oldie agie me, light of my life,” counters the other, getting really edgy. “I have my diary to prove it.” And then, through gritted teeth, “My angel.”

  It’s at that point I feel like screaming, “For fuck’s sake, who cares if it was Wednesday or Thursday! Just get on with it!”

  They’re the type who, when one tells a story, make frequent corrections to the flow. Sometimes, before the first person has barely even started the story, the other shouts, “For God’s sake, that’s the punch line! Don’t start with that! You’ve ruined it already!” Or the other, at the very end of some long saga, when they’ve been interrupted a dozen times, sighs, “Who’s telling this story, you or me?” You thought you’d invited a pair of love-birds around to your place; instead what you got was a bare-knuckle boxing match.

  One of my friends whose husband has retired says that she is infuriated by the sound of his step on the stairs at around noon every day and hearing the words, “What’s for lunch, pet?”

  “I married him for life, and not for lunch,” she says, shuddering as she speaks, moaning about having him around all day. I don’t like to tell her that that situation will, one day, change.

  It’s at times like these I thank God that, despite huge bouts of loneliness lurching into my life over the years, I am, for the moment, single. And I suspect, too, that at moments like these, the individual partners must, for a moment, just a fleeting moment, wish their partners would simply vanish in a puff of smoke.

  Then there’s also the horror of actually having to sleep beside someone night after night. It’s not just because physically sleeping together isn’t as enticing as it used to be. And it’s not just because of the joy of having a bed to myself. It’s also because there’s no more having to trail up to the spare room because of the insupportable snoring; no more having to crawl down to a cold sitting room in the middle of the night in case I wake a guy up by reading. No more moments when he wakes up in the middle of the night, turns on the light, and doesn’t go up to the spare room, leaving me fuming with eyes sweating into an airline mask. No more bitter arguments when he insists on turning on Radio 4 at 7:00 a.m. and proceeds to sleep through it.

  Evelyn Waugh said in his old age that he would rather visit the dentist for physical pleasure than share the marital bed—which was rather hard on Mrs. Waugh and, come to think of it, his dentist. And a third of women over sixty no longer sleep with their husbands—their men’s snoring, fidgeting, and uncontrollable libidos force women into separate rooms.

  Looked at from this angle, you know, the state of being single isn’t so bad.

  You’re Not Alone in Feeling Lonely

  Apparently 40 percent of Britons fear loneliness in their old age. The increasing desire of teenagers to break away from the family and set up in a one-bedroom or even one-room apartment increases the feeling of isolation that plagues our society today. Fear, real or imagined, doesn’t help—fear of walking the streets because you’re certain you will be assaulted by muggers or rapists who won’t stop, however friendly a smile you give them or however often you call them “darling” (see “Confidence”). Increasingly isolating laws, like those covering drunk driving, prohibiting smoking in public places, or requiring pubs and bars to have a license before they can even put on karaoke events, let along sing-alongs, force us out of a community and push us to indulge our addictions alone in our own homes.

  More and more people yearn not for a partner to do things with but for a partner to do nothing with. More and more people are working from home, and some never meet their virtual work colleagues at all. I’ve never met my lawyer, even though she’s drawn up my will, and have only met my accountant of five years once.

  Don’t be fooled into thinking that everyone else is out there having fun, relating to one another till they’re blue in the face. They’re not. There are loads of people just like you and me. Struggling. Getting on with it. Howling their eyes out in private, and in public insisting they’re “fine.” Remembering that can make you feel, oddly, less alone. More part of a loose-knit loneliness gang.

  Lodgers

  As I’ve said, I’ve always had lodgers. When I was broke I crammed so many of them into every nook and cranny that I often felt like an intruder in my own home; there is little more humiliating than returning from an evening out to find your kitchen stuffed with young people jabbering in Italian or Korean, staring at you rudely as if you were a gate-crasher.

  The sharing-of-common-parts method is one way to have lodgers. But that has its drawbacks. What I hated about that particular lodger setup was that it made me so stingy. Every time I went to the loo I’d be counting the rolls of toilet paper. (Had she taken one to use as tissues?) Every time I went to the fridge I’d be counting the eggs. Or checking the garden to see if they’d left any cigarette butts in the borders. Or staring at the milk in the furious certainty that Someone Had Pinched a Bit.

  And then I’d make secret forays into their rooms when they were away, sizzling with fury as I discovered my plates, broken, under the beds or, worse, the heater and the lights left on and the windows wide open.

  But recently I’ve found a much more rewarding way of having lodgers. A loo and shower w
ill fit into almost any tiny corner of the house and you can now buy mini freestanding kitchens that seem to be made for goblins, incorporating a tiny cooking range, wee fridge, minuscule sink, and a microwave the size of a small handbag. Thus I can have two lodgers sharing this lilliputian space who don’t interfere with my living quarters in any way at all.

  The house is now mine, all mine! The bathroom is mine and the fridge is mine. The freezer is clear of horrible bags of sweet corn and frozen factory-farm chicken breasts and boil-in-bag fish. I can play my music as loud as I like and leave the washing-up till morning.

  And yet—and this is the joy of it—I’m not alone. I have my boarders upstairs. And on the odd night (say, once a week) when I’m assaulted by feelings of loneliness, I can simply wait, like a mugger, in my dressing gown in the dead-of-night darkness for one of the poor saps to stagger in—he’s probably longing to go to bed—and chirp, “Good evening! And do you feel like having a quick nightcap?” And nine times out of ten the fellow is taken so unawares that he finds himself chatting in my kitchen till one in the morning just to assuage—most successfully—my lonely pangs.

  Ballroom Dancing

  My personal favorite. Even though I’m hopeless at it. It is not just a marvelously enjoyable way of exercising, but a brilliant way of being with someone else in an extremely intimate way without any sex, words, or whatnot. When I say “intimate” I’m not talking about the physical closeness. It’s the way you have to mirror another’s movements—just be with them psychically, to feel attuned and at one with another person. After an hour’s worth of fox-trotting, I can only say I feel I’m floating on air.

  Get in Touch with Yourself

  Oh yes, it all sounds so easy-peasy: it’s that insouciant “get in touch” as if it’s as simple as writing a postcard, and of course it isn’t easy at all. Some Indian sadhus have sat cross-legged at the top of mountains trying to get in touch with themselves for years. It’s a hard slog.

  The idea’s seductive. Feeling lonely and isolated? Haven’t got any friends? Hey—I’ve got an idea! Why don’t you make friends with yourself ? But when you try, you find that “yourself” isn’t in, or has moved to Palo Alto or is sulking in her tent, or says she’s got to wash her hair or that she’ll call back and never does. (See also Talking to Yourself in “Ailments.”)

  It’s still worth trying. Because there are two kinds of feeling alone. One is when we’ve just gotten divorced, or feel separated from everything and everyone—when we have simply lost connection with the world. We are not only without people to feel close to but, even when people are around, we still feel lonely. There is no lonelier spot than pressed by yourself against the wall at a party in full flow, surrounded by friends who are having a fabulous time.

  But we don’t necessarily need friends or lovers to keep loneliness at bay. There are other things we can connect with. We can connect with nature, rather like Henry Thoreau whose quotes kick off this chapter. He was a great promoter of the joys of solitude, and the presence of other people clearly made him feel rather sick.

  If you can actually get a glimpse of those joys, of solitude rather than loneliness, it’s pretty good. We have all had brief moments when, sitting in the garden with nothing but the birds for company on a sultry evening with the smell of woodsmoke in the air, we can experience real peace, a peace that can actually be ruined by someone else, even someone we love. We’re in touch with nature, we feel that every robin is our friend, and every rose is speaking to us. I take the risk, I know, of sounding rather soppy and Madeline Bassettish. (Remember her? She was the ghastly P. G. Wodehouse character who believed that the “stars are God’s daisy chain.”) But sometimes we can feel part of a greater universe that some people call being in touch with God. Whatever it is, we can, briefly, feel part of a greater whole.

  It’s not that easy to feel like that when you’re with someone else.

  Pamper Yourself

  I can’t stand the words, of course—relic of my upbringing, I suppose. It was always thought it rather low-class to want to “pamper yourself,” and certainly my elderly Scottish headmistress would have considered it tremendously self-indulgent when the alternative could have been reading an improving book about architecture. But if there’s no one else to make you feel special, then, like the Little Red Hen in the children’s book (and if you’re under sixty you won’t have heard of that either), you’ll have to “do it yourself.” Or, rather, pay for it yourself. A weekly massage needn’t be that expensive, particularly if, instead of going to some highfalutin salon, you get it done by a brilliant Thai girl down the road. A nice bath oil can make your daily bath a pleasure—and for heaven’s sake, if you just have a shower, do indulge yourself by getting the builders to squeeze a bath in, too, if you have room. Immersing yourself in hot water once a day is not an extravagant luxury. For lonely people, a long hot bath is almost (but not quite, of course) as good as sex.

  Visit Old People

  If you can’t “get thee to a grannery,” as one of my friends remarked when I told him I was far too busy with my grandchildren to see him—because if you don’t have grandchildren to look after or they live too far away or you find the whole thing much too tiring—then visiting lonely old people can be a real treat. I’m not joking. I think everyone should have at least a couple of old people to go see. Not only are they usually extremely pleased to see anyone, they are fascinating company and often delight in making you a delicious snack as if you were a child on vacation. After you have visited them, too, you often feel not only young but noble as well, not feelings to be sniffed at.

  Revel in Your Solitary State

  Now you can have as many crumbs in the bed as you like. You no longer need to shave your legs. You don’t have to apologize for being late coming home. You don’t have to suffer the misery of finding that the person you’re living with is suddenly, for reasons of his own, not speaking to you that day. You don’t have to argue about who’s in charge of the remote. You can also, as Katherine Whitehorn wrote in her autobiography, Selective Memory, delight in one of the very few pleasures she discovered after her husband died: “There is a sort of relief in not having to own up that you’ve been inept enough to drive from Kennington to Hampstead via a road labelled A23 Brighton.”

  Pets

  If you have a garden, you could always try a cat. But get two. Cats like company just as much as everyone else and it’s dotty to say they are loners. Also, get an old cat. If you’re anywhere near sixty-five you don’t really want the poor creatures to outlive you, which, were they to live for twenty years, they might well do. The animal shelter near me has a whole stack of ancient cats plaintively yowling as they wait to be rehoused.

  Or you could get a couple of dogs. They get you walking and these creatures do at least get you up in the morning. There is a temptation, when you’re single and old, to “go funny”—in other words, wake at 4:00 a.m., potter about, make a cup of tea, go on to Google, then crash out at 6:00 a.m. and not wake up till 10:00 a.m. If you need food that day, you might, as I have often done, put on a coat over your nightie, shove your feet into a pair of high-heeled shoes, and limp to the corner store for a few eggs and a paper. Stagger back, have a snooze after your scrambled-egg lunch, wake up to watch a bit of TV, and fall asleep over a book—without ever getting out of your dressing gown.

  Disgusting, I know, but there it is. (When a friend calls during a day like this and asks me what I’m up to, I reply, sharply, “Working, of course! What do you think?”)

  So an animal of some kind is pretty crucial. It might at least prompt you to get dressed.

  Old single ladies are traditionally associated with the keeping of cats, and I often have to stifle a yawn as my friends drone on about the antics of their own tedious furry friends. Sometimes you have to put up with a running commentary while you try to arrange a date on the telephone. “Thursday sounds fine,” they say on the other end. “But Wednesday—oh, Oscar! You naughty boy! What are you d
oing that for?” Then, to me, with an indulgent chuckle, “That was just Oscar, jumping up onto my knee. Yes, Wednesday . . . I think he wants to talk to you! Oscar! Oh, your breath’s a bit smelly, isn’t it? You be a good boy and go and have some milk. . . . No, Oscar, not on my computer!” Then, to me, “You should see him! He’s trying to get on my computer! He looks so funny!” Rest of the next five minutes spent with friend in uncontrollable giggles while I wait with pursed lips on the other end, still unsure when on earth we are meeting. And hoping that the ghastly Oscar won’t turn up as well.

  However, it was my friends’ turn to yawn during the last year, as I became for a while completely infatuated with a pigeon. Call me sad, but we did have a real, genuine relationship.

  It was no ordinary pigeon. It was a wonderful white creature with a bursting chest, a shimmering purple patch on its neck, a preposterous sprouting of a white crest on the back of its head, and an anonymous green tag on its leg. When he arrived he was clearly lost; he sat on my window day and night and pooped regularly on to my conservatory roof. Every so often I had to rush out to ward off neighboring cats. I fed him corn from my bathroom windowsill, and I seemed to be stuck with him. He loved human contact and when I came into view, he turned one eye to me and shimmered at me through the window. Trawling the Internet I discovered that he was no ordinary pigeon. Oh no. He was a fancy pigeon, bred for display. And I didn’t know anything about fancy pigeons.