From improving her painting to perfecting her garden, exploring family histories and reclaiming her mother’s art of tea-making, Alice Taylor discovers the challenges and pleasures of living alone.

Many of us spend the later years of life living solo when children have grown up and moved on. Others choose this lifestyle. We get used to being on our own while also enjoying family and communal occasions. But 2020 brought new challenges to this solo lifestyle. We rose to the first challenge thinking that it would all be over in a matter of weeks. But no. Instead came a series of on-again off-again lockdowns of different levels.

This was a new radical solitary living experience which was really going to test our endurance and resilience. Would the coping skills we had already acquired see us through? But this was more a hermitage existence than we had ever experienced, and it would really test our mettle.

Then, gradually, a realisation dawned that maybe there were things to be learnt from this unique situation? Might we discover a new understanding and appreciation of things previously ignored?

Alice Taylor began to wonder how best to handle this new solitary experience, and to document her progress though this most extraordinary year. This is her journey.