Our columnist’s rare time to himself causes him to reflect on his encounter with a man who had nothing but himself for company for years on end.
This week, for the first time in years, I am home alone. No beloved Rose. No beloved children. No beloved children’s friends sleeping on sofas and floors. ‘Happy the man,’ wrote Alexander Pope when he was only 12, ‘whose wish and care/A few paternal acres bound, /Content to breathe his native air,/In his own…
