Why it took me a trip to Europe’s partying capital to appreciate just how much we all need each other

IT promised to be bliss – a week in Ibiza, split between drinking cocktails while watching the sunset from Café del Mar and a couple of nights clubbing until dawn in Pacha and Eden, and between afternoons at the pool and driving around the island to find those small coves with just a single beach bar, a restaurant and a handful of other people.

My plan was to read a lot of books and watch a lot of television I had missed, so before I went, I loaded the Kindle with half a dozen novels, and downloaded an entire series of The Night Of, a Netflix crime drama of which I had heard great things, and a few movies and shows on Sky Go.

The reason I did all this is that I have a terror of being bored and also, perhaps more saliently, because for the first time in my life, I was going on holiday alone.

It was by no means the first time I have travelled solo, but when I do so, I usually am occupied by work, or meeting family or friends when I arrive.

Never before, though, have I spent a week lazing around and doing nothing, all by myself.

Sceptical

Because I’m over 50, and because online advertisements are so accurately targeted nowadays, I’m all too aware of holidays aimed at singletons in my age group, but these usually involve group activities.

Maybe it’s just me but I honestly can’t think of anything more mind-numbingly ghastly than going on excursions surrounded by people with whom I probably would have nothing in common beyond being unattached and heading gently towards my dotage.

When I told friends of my plans, some were sceptical.

How will you cope, they asked? Won’t you be lonely? Well, you learn to cope with solitude rather quickly, if not always easily, after divorce, and since I have no children, that’s another avenue closed to me.

My own company doesn’t terrify me (in fact, I often make myself laugh out loud and never fight with myself, which makes this an almost perfect relationship) and I seldom find myself unengaged in activity, even if it’s only talking to others online.

I know social media has its detractors, but they tend to be people who talk to their children over breakfast, shoot the breeze with colleagues at work, and sit down later for a chat with a spouse or partner.

Since I work from home, I see Facebook and Twitter as being little different to the office water cooler – they’re where I find out who’s dating, who just had a baby, who bought a new car, who moved house. It’s very different to the way we communicated even 20 years ago, but I don’t see that as a bad thing, just an evolution.

Some friends who enjoy more traditional avenues to physical interaction with others whispered that they were a little jealous of my being able to just up sticks and go where I wanted, to stay out late and be irresponsible, and not be tugged out of bed next morning to go to the pool or to a theme park.

So off I flew, picked up the hire car, drove to the hotel, and immediately sat out on the balcony in blazing sunshine to read a book – and, as expected, it was bliss. For about an hour. Then I realised it was almost dinnertime, and I moseyed out to see where I could eat. This is where a solo holiday comes unstuck.

There’s a difference between going out for food and going out for ‘a meal’.

A meal is so much more than what is on the plate. It’s the talking about what’s actually on the plate, about agreeing on a certain bottle of wine, about the conversation that gently unfolds over coffee at the end.

Pitying

When you’re with someone, dinner can occupy two or three hours; when you’re alone, even a restaurant with table service can feel like McDonald’s.

The staff, who often seem just as pitying as some of your friends, are terrified of leaving you be.

They fuss, and endlessly ask if you’re enjoying yourself, and fling course after course at you as if they were serving the food on a Frisbee.

On the first night, I was in and out of a restaurant in about 35 minutes, and that leaves a long night stretching ahead.

As it happens, I’m pretty gregarious (you’d be pretty hopeless as a journalist if you didn’t talk to strangers) and I always end up chatting with people, but it’s a very superfluous form of conversation, and ultimately unsatisfying.

I still did it, though, because as the week wore on, even I started to ask myself why, when I spend most of my life on my own anyway, I had elected to do so somewhere else.

Well over a quarter of us now live in single-person households. We’re separated, we’re divorced, we’re widowed, we never married at all.

We’re men and women of all ages, and we’re learning how to negotiate a world that has changed since our childhoods of unlocked front doors and neighbours just popping in for a cuppa.

I don’t miss that much, to be honest. Indeed, on a recent night out in a pub meeting a friend, we agreed to move elsewhere because there was horse racing from the States on four televisions and, no matter where we sat, we always seemed to be under speakers blaring out bad Seventies and Eighties rock.

It was a startling moment for me, because I realised I’m just no longer used to that sort of sensory overload when most of my life is conducted in a cocoon of quiet calm.

Yes, I have learned to make the most of conversation when I have the chance and, given that a few locals know what I do for a living, I often am asked in the shop or on the street for insider information on the issues of the day that I mostly don’t have.

Embarrassed

Seizing on these small interactions can lead to misfortune, though. I got so engrossed in a chat once with a local shopkeeper, I still was looking at him when I grabbed the door handle. I pulled it open, turned around – and walked into the Coke fridge. I was so embarrassed, I haven’t been back since.

As for Ibiza, well, there were moments when I was as relaxed and happy as I ever have been, and others when I felt I was going through the motions and pretending everything was fine, when really I should have been with others.

Fortunately, at one nightclub, a group of Australians in their twenties adopted me and we partied together until nearly seven in the morning, and it came at just the right time to get me over the minor hump of disillusionment that had started to bubble.

If I took anything from the week away, it was this. You don’t have to be surrounded by people all the time – in fact, it can be claustrophobic – but nor can we really fully exist spending excessive periods alone.

Somewhere in the middle is the sweet spot. Finding it may take a little more time, but one thing is for sure – next time I go on holiday, I’ll be looking for a victim to come along too.