Dear Geraldine, Jose, Cari, and anyone else at GNHQ - may I have a word please.

I think it depends what sort of example you have. My mother was on her own for 10 years after my father died and I am sure she found it difficult but she was always doing things. The last time I saw her before she died was at her house and she was simultaneously watching wimbledon, doing the times crossword, cooking a ham, had just made a jelly and had the french doors open with birds eating bread on the bird table and pots of herbs everywhere. Even now when I am on my own ( and I have a husband) I come in and put everything on - radio, tv, kettle, washing machine - for company! and if in doubt roast a chicken or bake a cake. I think some people are more prone to it than others and you can even get that awful lonely sinking feeling when all the children have left home. But you really do have to keep busy and then you get tired which means you sleep better.

As for saying Twitter and sucklike isn't 'real'..a couple of years back I had a nuisance phone call in the early hours of the morning. I wasn't well at the time, which made it worse. It really spooked me. I logged on to a forum and found that someone on it was awake and posting. This was someone who I never thought of as one of my 'internet chums' but it made all the difference between me feeling totally alone and quite scared, and feeling ok. I went back to sleep, but left the computer on! There was also a really bad earth tremor a few years back; I had no idea what had happened [thought a bomb had been dropped]. Again there were people on a forum talking about it.

Butternut

Incredibly profound.

Butternut - what a lovely thoughtful response.

I think each individual needs differ depending on their own specific circumstances with regard to the quantity/quality of aloneness, which I view as being different from loneliness.

Loneliness can strike at any time, whether surrounded by others, or not, and it can be miserable, whoever you are.

Aloneness is a choice. Loneliness is not.

I have experienced both and they are as different as chalk and cheese.

for all those experiencing loneliness today.

I am very happy in my own company most of the time, but I do get lonely sometimes at weekends when a little bit of company would be nice. I was most lonely when I was married (to the wrong man obviously!)

I don't think that there is any excuse for living on cheese and biscuits because there is no one else to cook for. It's just silly.

I agree with that, but what surprised me was that, as someone who does like to be alone, I found total solitude unbearable. I can still remember the misery of it and how the house felt. I sometimes used to visit my cousin for a couple of days, and it was awful walking into my empty house. A house that has people in it sometimes doesn't feel empty; a house that never has other people in it is. Difficult to explain what I mean unless someone has experienced it.

I think people naturaly fall into one of two groups, those who are quite happy with their own company and those who arent. I have always been very self contained, as is my daughter. My husband and son prefer to have other people around. My husband's work took him away from home a lot and as much as I love him I really enjoyed the times I was alone. My husband on the other hand hates being on his own. If he is home alone he will spend half the time ringing me or the children and he will eat out, not because he cant be bothered to cook but because he wants the sight and sound of people around him.

My GD, who is just 4, is a people needer. She needs to be interacting with people all the time, and it can be very wearing. The worst thing you can do to her is make her go somewhere and be alone. Her 18 month old brother falls into the self-contained group he plays happily alone and will play in his cot quite contentedly if he has his favourite toys.

..oh heck; my spelling is getting worse!

I put something else in my post, which I took out, and that was that, when I was newly divorced I went with a friend [also newly divorced] to her works Christmas do. Part way through the evening I said to her I felt that every time I spoke to any of the men there, their wives gave me strange looks and seemed uneasy... I asked he if I was imagining it but she told me that, no, I wasn't. It felt very odd to me, because I'd always had firends who just hapened to be men, and I hadn't changed at all, just my circimstances. Must poit out as well that I've never been 'flirty' with men in any way, neither was my friend. A friend who was widowed said the same thing happened to her.It's as if we suddenly became 'dangerous'.

I used to feel that I must be considered infectious when I was first divorced. People whom we had entertained to dinner didn't return the invitation when it was just me. Even my best friends invited me for high tea with the family, not with other friends who were, of course, couples. I was quite hurt by this at first, but eventually just got used to it and evolved my own social life with a few good friends.

I would imagine that loneliness is even worse for men, who are not able to go out and chat to people the way that women do. In response to what harrigran has said, my husband was always away and we had different interests, so I did a lot of things on my own, and it didn't bother me in the slightest. However, when I was actually 'on my own' I felt as if I had a hologram across my forehead saying 'she's on her own, you know' and, sudddenly everyone around me seemed to be with someone. Had anyone suggested to me in years before that I would feel that way I wouldn't have believed them.

Mine goes out flying his model aeroplanes all day Saturday.

In the week he's mostly in his shed repairing them.

..the S.O. is here at weekends; I've just received a new cd in the post..have been playing it loudly while he has been out walking the dog..now have to turn it off. Things like this do my head in....

Nope. You are being completely normal. Even when they come here there is always, mixed in with the sadness when they go, a little bit of "ah! tidiness again - where's my kindle!"

I am afraid of getting too used to my own company. I live too far from the DSs and their families to see them more than about once a month and I'm usually the one who has to make the effort to go and see them, so busy are they with their own weekend activities and as the GC get older, this can only get busier. The trouble is that, although I hate to wave goodbye to them, I often find myself relieved to be back home and able to choose what I watch on TV and when I get up for breakfast and so on. Am I becoming an anti-social recluse?

Cari As you are good friends with Age-UK, could you get them to put a boot up the b***s**e of Eon for failing to give people the right info when they phone to ask about the cheapest tariff? And for letting their (very pushy) door-to-door salesman tell us that if we signed up to the tariff he recommended, we would get a payback each day the temperature dropped below zero?

On closer inspection it transpired that that was only on the higher of the two Age-UK tariffs, and the place they measured the temperature was in a warmer region of the UK (and the payback was so small it would not have helped us keep warm anyway)

Absolutely Gally!

"Tweeted it"!

CariGN Better to let us know anything vital, like Breakfast, on GN - I still can't get my head around this tweeting thing (my MP does it and that's enough to put me off - ex P.M. Mr.Brown! )

But you still had your husband harrigran and he came home at weekends. I think the bleakness must set in when you can see no end to it.

It is very sad that people can be that lonely, one always thinks of celebrities being surrounded by lots of people. My husband worked away from home for 16 years and I was alone for 5 days a week, I did not work, but can honestly say I was not lonely.