I spend quite a lot of my time alone these days.

I don’t mind. No really, I don’t mind. In fact, I would go so far as to say that actually, I love it.

I get up and make breakfast and a packed lunch for lad, before he heads off to school.

I chat with my partner over a cup of Earl Grey, before he heads off to work.

And then, then, I am gloriously alone – to sew, to garden, to do the little mundane things that make up a life of domesticity.

I know that this arrangement won’t last forever and that all too soon I imagine that I, too will be heading out of a morning, to whatever job or occupation takes up most of the waking hours of my life.

I used to resent working. It felt like a great big cuckoo in my nest, pushing all the things I enjoyed and felt to be important to the edges of life. And now, far from feeling trapped, or bored, I love being at home.

When “work” returns to my life I will do it to the best of my ability, as I always have. But I will miss these times. And so I appreciate them every day.

But being alone during the day is one thing. Being alone in the evening is quite another.

Last night I found myself unexpectedly alone. My partner was working away, something of a last minute decision made only that morning. And lad went off to a sleepover, an equally spontaneous arrangement.

One night all alone. I had stuff to get on with, plenty to keep me occupied. I have been working to complete a commission and I can’t show anyone yet. Just one night on my own. I ought to have been getting on with it.

But I felt… unsettled. I am hardly ever home alone at night.

Its not that it frightens me to be in the house on my own, but last night I felt… genuinely alone. Like I never do in the daytime, when my family will be due back later.

I ate, cleared up, sat.

The house felt… still.

From the kitchen I could hear my very elderly neighbour on the other side of the wall, arguing with her grown-up son who had come to pay a visit.

My neighbour spends a lot of her time alone. I used to chat to her in the garden often, but she rarely leaves the house nowadays and won’t answer her door.

She thinks she sees people in her garden. She shouts at them and bangs on the window. Her son tries to reassure her, and gets angry at her insistence. This is how their conversations go.

It’s good to like one’s own company.

But sometimes, it takes a moment of real solitude to properly appreciate the company of others.

I think about being alone, and I think about being lonely, and I think how different the two are. ♥