LIZ JONES’S DIARY: In which I feel more alone than ever
I’m on the train home after my mini-break with Mini in Totnes. The apartment was perfect, with a huge terrace, a Big Green Egg barbecue, an enormous outside table, deck chairs, organic bed linen.
The fridge was stuffed with wine and water. There was fresh sourdough. Four bedrooms, a huge kitchen, space! I ate every day in the Bull Inn opposite; the owner, Geetie, used to run the Duke of Cambridge in Islington, where I would dine every Friday night, fearful my then husband would dirty the kitchen only moments after H, the cleaner, had departed.
I hadn’t packed dog food, as Mini will only eat human food. After this weekend, I wager she will now eat only restaurant food. I decided to go on my own, on the train, without my friend, to decompress.
But I discovered that the worst aspect of going on holiday is that I always take myself along.
The three pristine, unslept-in beds only made me feel idiotic: what have I done with my life? Why am I alone?
I hid in the apartment with a novel: Yellowface. With its tale of trial by social media, its protagonist an unsuccessful writer who lives alone, who trawls the internet finding other writers who are more successful than she is, was slightly too close to home.
It made me very anxious.
I sat in a corner wondering why I was not in a villa surrounded by family
I did plan to go out. I booked a table at The Pig at Combe, where I had once been with David 1.0.
But I couldn’t persuade a taxi firm to take us. One even put the phone down on me at the prospect of a 40-mile-each-way fare.
I wanted to take Mini to the beach but worried it would be too much for her.
So, faced with the options of the wild expanse of Dartmoor and the red sand of the coastline at Sidmouth, I opted for a teeny square of grass 20 yards from the apartment, where Mini would wee next to a sign that shouted, ‘Do not let your dog soil our community garden!’
I watched the Women’s World Cup final on my laptop, fearing if I went to a pub, the cheering would upset Mini.
Jones moans… What Liz loathes this week
- I’m in first class but still no crisps after over an hour. I’ve just told the whole carriage that I’m hypoglycaemic!
- Why, on a Sunday evening in August, is everywhere shut?
I then watched Silver Linings Playbook and Juliet, Naked, both of which I’ve seen dozens of times before.
I sat in a corner of The Bull Inn each evening, wondering why I was not in a villa, surrounded by family, under a heaving pergola, with deep bowls of food being shared. Laughter.
But real life, sadly, is not like a romcom. Mental illness makes you undatable, not Jennifer Lawrence.
The rock star you meet online doesn’t sit in a café, waiting, standing with a smile when he spots you, ready for your happy ending.
He certainly doesn’t resemble Ethan Hawke. Someone posted online recently that staying in a spa is hell, as being surrounded by people shuffling in slippers is like being confined in an asylum. So true.
I realise why, whenever I’ve travelled for work, I’ve always booked a treatment in the hotel spa. It’s something to do, an hour or so when I can try not to catastrophise.
A few moments when I look, from the outside at least, normal.
As though a man is waiting for me in the bar, a life waiting for when I get home.
I’d texted David 1.0 to tell him I was in Devon. He seemed to think I was with a man. Why?
‘A small mini-break is sometimes known as a one-night stand.’
Oh, for god’s sake. Who, seriously, would have me?
On Saturday evening, feeling I should make an effort, I put on jeans, my new Navygrey V-neck, Gucci slides. After a few minutes, a man came over to my table, leaned in.
Blimey! I’m still catnip! Catnip to men! And then he said: ‘Your ears are making a very high-pitched whistle. My wife wears hearing aids, so I think you need to push them in a bit more.’
Oh god. I want to shrivel up and die.
I scurry back to the apartment and close the curtains.
I’m now on the train home, phew, having enlisted three men and a woman to help me get Mini – who is scared of the gap – on to the carriage.
Me? I’m already anxious about alighting in six hours’ time.
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