Everlasting love

A few weeks ago, feeling stale and stressed, I escaped to our dilapidated cottage in Dorset for a few days on my own. When I was younger, and especially when I was drinking heavily, I often felt ill at ease in my own company, but these days I get on quite happily alone, though I sometimes worry that I talk to myself too much, and wonder whether I am going slightly mad in my old age. I once read that it’s OK to talk to yourself, but there might be cause for concern if you find that you are answering yourself back. I do that all the time.

If I am going mad at least it is a contented kind of dottiness, and walking on the cliffs, eating seafood at the splendid Hive Beach Café in Burton Bradstock and drinking endless cups of PG Tips did me the world of good. It also increased my desire to get a dog. Chatting away to myself wouldn’t seem so odd if I had a faithful hound trotting along beside me, or lying at my feet as I slumped in the armchair. These days I look at other people’s dogs with profound envy, and long to have one of my own. I think I have even identified the breed, a Lakeland terrier. It’s the unconditional love of dogs I think one craves. Our cat Nelson, fine and characterful creature though he is, often looks at me with what looks suspiciously like contempt, when he’s not pulling the even more disconcerting trick of acting as though he has never seen me before in his life.