Long before Covid-19 forced an artificial isolation on me, loneliness has been my companion. I became aware of this loneliness when surrounded by the men I had spent time with during the last thirty years. The irony of this did not go unnoticed – being lonely in a crowd is part self-choice, part self-defence. I kept telling myself that I chose this path of solitude but if truth be told, it chose me. And until I surrendered to it, the fear of being isolated was worse than the actual reality.