When I am not with my always-receptive and long-suffering girlfriend, I spend hours and hours on my own. I have lunch alone, I coffee solo, read a book, do a crossword; a walking Edward Hopper painting with a plaintive, whistling soundtrack. Where are the real friendships in my life, I wonder as I walk? Where are loyal and empathetic crime partners, the through-thick-and-thin soulmates that everyone else seems to have? The solid, stalwart, good-guy buddies that would help me navigate the heartache of divorce, money worries, myriad vocational traumas and the untimely death of a parent?
Our beloved capital is officially one of the loneliest cities in the world. A recent survey found just seven per cent of Londoners strongly agree it’s a good place to make new friends and one was 14 per cent less likely than in the average city to have made a new friend recently. This put us seventeenth out of the 18 cities surveyed for sociability, all before lockdowns kicked in and made us lonelier.
