The Unexpected Joy of Being Single

by Catherine Gray

Most of the women persecuted during the Salem witch trials were either single or widows.

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Irish women couldn’t buy a house outright, without a male co-signee, until 1976. Women couldn’t open a bank account in their own name until 1975 in the UK. Single women couldn’t apply for a loan or a credit card without their father’s signature and permission (even if they earned more than their father!), until the mid-seventies.

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The explosion of single people (particularly women) is not a crisis, it’s feminism (otherwise known as equality) working its magic.

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‘The brain is like Velcro for negative experiences, but Teflon for positive ones.’

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‘The way we are living, timorous or bold, will have been our life.’ – SEAMUS HEANEY

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Neith Boyce, a novelist, Vogue columnist and refusenik of marriage, wrote back in the early 1900s: ‘There are available suitors...if one is not particular’. Man, that’s good. I want to cross-stitch that onto a floral cushion right now.

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JANE AUSTEN’S EMMA ‘I always deserve the best treatment because I never put up with any other.’

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If you would marry them even if you couldn’t tell anyone else, ever; if you would marry them if you couldn’t wear a ring; if you had to get married in an empty room wearing a bin-bag, and you still would. Then that’s a great litmus test that you should.

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