"I go to the same pub every night around 7. I sit at the same table, on the same chair and order the same ale. I need to be around people in the evenings. The quietness of my flat is too loud. Over the years I've got to know the other customers who drink in the pub. The regulars. I suppose I'm a regular. Something I'd never thought I'd end up as. I like it when the students come in drinking on a pub crawl. They're loud but they are young and they are excited. Sometimes one of them will get talking with me and it almost feels like I'm at a family party speaking to young relatives. Deep down, I know, when it's time to go home, there's no one waiting for me at home. In 2009 I was driving home with my wife from a skiing holiday in France. She'd always wanted to go to Tignes so that year I surprised her for her birthday. We had a wonderful time. On the way home, I'd been driving for six hours straight when I nodded off for a second. The car drifted into a layby, where a van had broken down. The driver had gone looking for help. My wife's side hit a corner of the van and in that moment, I lost my world. We never had kids. We wanted to just travel and have nice meals you know and go the theatre. That sort of stuff. We wanted it to just be us. Before she died, we had plans to move to Taipei to teach English. My younger sister comes to clean my flat once a fortnight. But I get the feeling she does it more out of obligation than actually wanting to visit. We were never really close. Loneliness is the space between distractions."
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