NOT LONESOME ON MY OWNSOME

Gillie Gardner expounds the

casual artistry of life without husbands

BACHELOR LIVING is indeed an art worth mastering. Martin Vander Weyer was right to sing its praises in these pages in the Christmas issue (Private pleasures from A to Z', 18/25 December). How odd, though, that he should confine his thoughts to the male, which meant that his ABC of bachelordom was Autocratic, Bor- ing and Complacent. Does he not know that women have refined their single-living habits with casual artistry?

The problem must be semantic. I am at a loss to describe myself. Men may intro- duce themselves smugly as 'a bachelor at present', but the equivalent 'spinster' is horrid and misleading. Spinsters were dependent home-bound virgins; indepen- dent and hard-working we are, virginal we are not. My brewer friend, James Craven- Smith, tells me that 'bachelor girl' conjures an image of drinking wine from half-pint tankards. Scrabble players suggest 'Jo' (cf. `Joel, which is apparently old Scottish for an independent girl. Classicists suggest leminor', but it sounds like a trade name for a gynaecological product. Antewife, or antiwife, assume that my status must be defined by attachment, or lack of it, to a man. On my French tax return I ticked the box for 'concubine' with glee, and have never received another demand — have they found the mythical man who keeps me? I was tempted by the term 'singulari- ty', but had the misfortune to introduce myself as such to a physicist; singularities are the thin rings around black holes.

I think I shall co-opt the title 'mistress', for the classical mistress is surely extinct. Who knows anyone kept in luxury for the cinq a sept? I am the master of my own domaine: my time, my cash, my mind and body, even if my heart is more often than

not the property of the opposite sex. I wish I had been educated in France and could call myself a Maitresse des Lettres instead of a Master of Science.

Whatever we call ourselves, we have life taped. I have only spent 15 weeks on my own (poor old Vander Weyer — 15 years, what's his problem?) but have lapped up the advice of my more experienced friends. A different person for every aspect of life, they say. Girl friends are better for the theatre, but one does need a man to share the raw emotion of the opera. Films are good for granny-bashing. Men are much more fun to ski with, and to sail with, but take a girl every time for cosy gossip. Men are best at stabbing polit- ical gossip and their knowledge of sexual liaisons is encyclopaedic. Women for talk- ing on the telephone: so few men can enjoy this leisurely pursuit. Men for corre- spondence, for scholarly flirtations on postcards. Young friends as lodgers either sex, but it does one's reputation good to have a sparkling 28-year-old to leave for work with in the morning. I have an essential nephew for this purpose.

Young friends, too, for conversation and new ideas, old ones for wisdom. The old and wise to pray with, the young for cyni- cism. Grey-haired men for confidences over lunch. Married friends for comfort, single people for secrets and a good moan. Single people have more time for reading and thinking, so are definitely best when you are in an intellectual mood. Choose particular friends for particular things in one's life.

My best friend of all cleans and tidies for me, and allows me to live a completely undomesticated life. Since I am single, she can now leave me a delicious Spanish omelette instead of the old pile of ironed shirts. I can even let my exes bring back their washing without a qualm.

I am freed, too, from the tyranny of meals on time, from having to watch thug- gery, cowboys and American football, freed from having to watch television at all. Free to buy a different newspaper every day.

Free to have dinner in the bath (eat the ice cream first — it melts — but the soup will keep hot as the saucepan floats). Free to drive in the slow lane if I am listening to lovely music or a talking book. Free to go to a party for just half an hour if it pleases me, or to stay to the bitter end without noticing time passing at all.

I am not, however, free from walking the dog, but I do advise every single person to have one. Preferably a sex-mad disobedient one. Although I loathe my grubby little ter- rier's face being stuffed into mine at 7 a.m., he forces me out to meet and talk to fasci- nating strangers. My favourite author mis- laid his own chow while helping me find and catch the little brute in Kensington Gardens. I meet an interesting class of male as I try to stop my terrier from biting their Doberman or bull terrier, or nipping their horse's heels. I am not exactly friendly with the officer of the mounted troop that my aggressive little cairn brings to a halt in the mornings in Rotten Row, but his sharp commands add a frisson to the day. One single friend suggested spending more than one could afford on a good hunter, as there are more eligible sex-mad people on the hunting field than almost anywhere else. But I don't enjoy thrashing passion in the horse-box.

My friends advise me to live my life where the man/woman ratio is right. They mean that one should try to find oneself outnumbered by those one wants to meet. No messing about with dining clubs for sin- gles, as women of a certain age predomi- nate, but if you like them young, and you can stand the noise, try the nightclubs of Val d'Isere, where the ratio was six to one last week. Don't go to fashionable gyms, which are full of lithe and beautiful females, which is very depressing, although perfect for the lone man. The late, and very lamented, Fleur Riddell could pick up a poet in the Crush Bar at the Royal Opera House, but I recommend the Reading Room at the British Museum. It is thick with lonely scholars itching to catch one's eye and talk about Blake; any distraction is better than none when hours of frustrated search have failed to dig up useful material.

Also I am told that committees (not unpaid charity stuff but the lucrative non- exec.) and quangos are rich with those with nobody they need to go home to. Not only do such committees yield very satisfactory

cash per minute, but afterwards there are things to be mulled over tete-a-tete. Hooray for the token woman.

But having too much money is a positive disadvantage for the single woman. If there is nothing pressing to get up for in the

morning, no living to earn, no one to look after, or even notice you haven't got out of bed, then gloom may descend. So get a garden, a big one with greenhouses and a kitchen-garden. Every day it will demand your attention and you will leap out of bed to see what the frost killed, or what was torn up in the storm. It will also soak up all your money, so you won't have the prob- lem of being rich any more, which is a blessing, since rich lone women attract, amongst others from time to time, awful shits.

Most important for the mistress of the house, however, is a troop of endlessly fas- cinating children, preferably one's own. Interesting and independent, they can be the best company, be the best shoulders to cry on, and be the most exacting if one starts to slip into spinsterism. Before they reach their teens, train them in basic sur- vival. They are likely to be just as good as you are at loading and unloading machines, cooking, shopping etc., and they will have more time than you to do it in. Let them consider you vaguely hopeless and they will take pride in coping when you can't. Suffer the late-teen prima donna period in the certain knowledge that they are as keen to leave the nest as you are to kick them out. Replace them with a lover and you won't miss them at all.

For the single, self-sufficient female does miss someone to love and to be loved by. When we were an agricultural society, we had to be owned by the man whose children we bore, just as he possessed the land he tilled and seeded. We are almost all hunter-gatherers now, however, living from the fruits gathered by the knowledge we carry in our heads — so ownership of each other is no longer necessary. Modern life is a maelstrom and we are free to enjoy it provided we do as we would be done by. Happily, this social revolution has found us the perfect answer — a 'partneri We can have our cake and eat it.