Since the start of the pandemic I have been dreaming of being home alone. But when a precious day fell into my lap, did I make the most of it?
At peak lockdown, all anyone living with a family or flatmates fantasised about was getting 20 minutes at home alone. None of us had a concrete plan for what we would do in that time. It was just a longing for silence, for the guarantee of a short window in which nobody would be hungry or thirsty, or break anything, no incursions would be made into anyone else’s concentration, no fresh hostilities launched between household rivals, the incredible peace of nobody even moving from one room to another.
To have dreamed in 2020 of having a whole 24 hours alone in a house would have been pointless and absurd, a waste of imagination. Wish fulfilment should always double up as positive visualisation, which is to say, the wished-for thing must have at least a sliver of a chance of coming true, otherwise you’re asking the universe to ignore you. I would never, for instance, sit around wondering how I would spend €25m from the lottery, or what kind of display cabinet I would like for my Nobel prize.
Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
