These words from a 50-years-ago pop song reverberate through the minds of many people – young and searching, old and confined by physical, mental or financial constraints. Or middle-aged, beginning to recognise their own mortality. They’re not self-pity, they don’t accuse the world of neglect, they’re not an apology for life (if we had to do that we’d never stop). They are perfectly reasonable thoughts. You might be having them standing on a seaside hilltop at sunset. Or you could be waiting for someone in a carpark, somebody who’d forgotten a date to meet you there. A queue at the hospital for some procedure, a dream from the past that stirs feelings you’d almost forgotten.
Should we escape, run away from them, try to think of something positive, like we are so often told to do? No doubt all these professional advices are invaluable. Just a bit theoretical. Just a bit “Remedy No X”. Who the hell wants Remedy No X when they’re lonely? I know I don’t. Or thinking about the plight of many poor, displaced people who don’t have 5% of the comforts and opportunities you and I do? Don’t add guilt to the awesome weight of loneliness. It leads down a dark path to a place of doom. We’re not doomed in spite of some leaders’ behaviour.
We’ve got the great assets of imagination and guts – the greatest assets we could have. The price for them is effort, a discipline we are often reluctant to employ for its echoes of school and work reprimand. But you can love effort. Absurd you might say. I would have said so myself at one time. Not now. Sweaty, aching, too. Like deep diving, so relieving when you surface and realise the achievement was yours. Not that of some remote power encased in myth. Not a fix from the latest AI model. Not a handout from a government wanting to even up the oddnesses of life. No, it’s yours, all yours. Smart. So satisfying to just be a little smart.
Start today. Write a story, perhaps from your own life, perhaps completely imaginary. Give it a beginning, a middle and an end. Don’t make it long, perhaps 500 words but no more. Don’t try to make it sophisticated, the best stories are simple, natural tales that have often been told before. Use AI but improve on it. If it just looks AI I shall say “Pfft”. If you send it to me I will (a) give you a polite but honest opinion of it (b) make a picture I think would help illustrate it and (c) not tell you anything about how we work. I’ll have to limit my offer to the first 25.
It won’t turn you into a Jane Austin or William Shakespeare. It will help you to stop being lonely. There are worse things in the world.
Have a go. Especially if you are all alone, too.
Good morning
John Bittleston
Send your offerings to me at [email protected].
22 July 2026
