Solitude.

Many consider Solitude a curse in youth but a boon in your older age. Einstein himself suggested this and I have not yet achieved his age nor level of understanding and so I may yet be proved wrong but......

I did find solitude painful in youth, a comprehensive solitude and individuality that so many teens feel and (a cliche I know) felt that I was the only living boy in Edinburgh. A farm boy from the highlands, fifteen, suddenly studying in the Athens of the North. You can imagine the displacement.

However as things changed others did not.

Fifteen or so years ago my wife and I separated. I soon had a new girlfriend, younger, prettier, exciting. I had become a magnet to girl's (of a certain age and experience) at the time, successful in business, a writer and though losing my hair I was still fit and reasonably athletic whilst financially comfortable.

Still I felt alone, separate, from my pretty new girlfriend, from the world. I have since remarried. I found a beautiful girl, all that any man should or could ever want but often still feel alone even when in her company. Together and alone, synchronous and individual, together and apart simultaneously

. I am strange.