The novelist Alison Jamesonwas a vocal champion of the single life, but now she's contemplating coupledom.
The first dance we learned was the Boston two-step. There was a short waltzing part in the middle, and we dreaded it. And, of course, I didn't like my dance partner. How could I tell her? How would I lose her? Her arms were so heavy it was like carrying two logs. She also had a tendency to step in too quickly and wrap them around me, and then we would waltz away in a sort of hug.
She had frightened me by telling me that she supported the IRA, and somewhere in my 12-year-old imagination I was afraid she might shoot me. But I needed someone to dance with, and in my panic I grabbed the first person who came along. I became worried and restless. At a girls' boarding school in the middle of nowhere best friends and dance partners were the centre of our world.
There were no men on the horizon, of course, unless you included the priest who came to say Mass or the biology teacher who wore the same green jumper for five years. What we were doing, without realising it, was learning to live happily, at least for a while, without them. I had grown up in a house surrounded by brothers and sisters, and even at that age I relished having a space of my own. I had spent a great deal of time wandering and thinking, and at school it was impossible to be solitary. I realised that fitting in and being socially acceptable were necessary to my happiness. A girl had little to gain by being on her own.
It was, in the beginning, a common social dilemma. The desire to find someone special to share your life with versus the fear of getting it wrong. The need for love and companionship versus the need for a space of your own. As a writer I have always needed time to myself and freedom, and, being a romantic, I believed some day the right guy - someone who would understand that - would just come along. I had no idea what was ahead of me. The nuns who taught me many useful things - the hymn to St Michael and how to make a three-egg sponge cake - were like chocolate teapots when it came to men.
My first love was Jimmy Casey. At four years of age he crossed the street and got his head stuck in our garden gate. I looked at him for a while - he was wearing red sandals - then walked off and left him there. At kindergarten, when I climbed into the double desk to sit beside him he slid rapidly to the other side. His father ran the local takeaway, and I liked him because he always smelled of chips.
My standards improved as I grew older, but I have always been drawn to unusual men. "Unusual" is a very broad descriptor, of course. A few of them were not right in the head. One man sat opposite me in the Shelbourne and told me calmly that a lot of women fancied him. He had even been stalked by a few of them. In fact, fighting them off was a full-time job. When I looked across the table I saw a small man in a sports coat. I excused myself and went into the bathroom to laugh.
My friend dated the world's meanest man. The price of things was his favourite topic of conversation. Every time a bill appeared she needed a crowbar to get his wallet out. He bought her gold jewellery even though she only wore silver. "Yes, but it's a better investment," he said. I had coffee with a man who described his "irritable colon" in great detail. When he told me he took Valium for his condition I was in need of one myself.
"Tell me I'll never have to be out there again," Carrie Fisher says to Bruno Kirby in When Harry Met Sally. Despite the many comforts of single life there are times when one can become thoroughly sick of being on one's own. I was always optimistic, though, that this particular date, despite appearances, might turn into something good. A friend was persuaded to go on a blind date recently. "How's it going?" I asked her by text. She replied: "I'm on a date with Ken Dodd."
But in the end it was a trip to the Galway Races, two years ago, that almost finished me. I have never seen so much fake tan or so many hats, bosoms, strappy sandals, highlights, lowlights, handbags and glasses of champagne on parade. I felt a bit like that line from Withnail and I : "We've gone on holiday by mistake."
Trapped in a hotel late at night with no hope of a taxi, the sound of the bar shutters going down suddenly brought out the single men. I was not expecting the Pamplona bull run. As my mother often told me: "When you see what's out there you might be better off staying in."
Almost 40 per cent of Irish women aged 35 and over are single, and, according to the American Sociological Association, "never-married singles have the highest rate of wellbeing, compared to singles who are separated or divorced".
It is too easy to group people into categories. What we miss, I think, is that behind every singleton is another story - an independent spirit, a broken heart, a desire for freedom, a bereavement, a divorce, a need for solitude, a hopeless romantic. The courage to take the road less travelled for a little while, or a long while. To be on their own.
I say the road less travelled because society prefers neatness and order, and many of us are more comfortable in twos. Singles, particularly those who seem to be happy, defy categorisation, and as result single women over the age of 35 can be treated like bombs that are about to explode. Their well-groomed image, self-assurance, career and independence make others uncomfortable. Perhaps it is because they do not appear to be miserable or needy. Quite the contrary: their lives without significant others seem to be full and plenty. They are the lively dots, outside the social circle, that refuse to join up.
But single people are not aliens. They didn't descend in a spaceship with a label that said "Career Girl" or "Loner" or "Please do not touch". They're the same as you were before you got married. I say this because for some reason couples seem to suffer from double vision, especially when issuing dinner-party invitations. Imagine a dinner party for five or seven or nine - the horror of it. That odd number could cause a complete loss of balance, enough to turn the dinner table upside down.
Single people are among the most interesting people you'll meet at dinner. In my experience they're independent and highly individual - and you will never hear them say "his nibs" or "my other half" or "we like to . . ." Not even once.
"When I was single I had nothing at all to worry about," one of my married friends tells me. When I ask how her life has changed, she says: "Look into my car." It is a soup pot of baby wipes, booster seats, half-eaten rusks, naked Barbies and Spider-Man socks. We are having coffee in a city-centre hotel, and just as I am about to bite into my sandwich she lifts her toddler into the air and sniffs the back of his pants. Even the baby looks embarrassed.
I guess you might say I'm not the clucky type. So it has been with a certain amount of glee that I've left noisy houses on Sunday evenings, in a quiet car, soft music playing, to go back to the peace and solitude of my home. Is that selfish? Yes. Was it all about me? I guess so. What was I doing at home? Nothing. That was the best part.
"I am thought of as a recluse," wrote Daphne du Maurier, "which suggests someone who is very lonely - but there is a difference between being lonely and being solitary." She was a gifted writer but was considered a bit of an oddball- because she preferred to be alone. It is difficult to write with people around you. Three months on my own in Manhattan and my book Under My Skin began to take shape.
But being solitary is not confined to writers and artists. There are many things that are just easier, and sometimes nicer, to do on your own. How many of us have spent happy hours pottering in the garden or reading or listening to the radio, just enjoying the special peace and quiet that comes when you're alone?
Being married after all those days of freedom might be a bit like the ballroom dancing for me. There may an occasional loss of rhythm, but I'll get the hang of it after a while.
June 2007 and I'm having dinner with my future father-in-law in Boston. Funny how life can take you by surprise. The house, made of wood and surrounded by trees, is cooled by old-style propeller fans, and inside it is an Aladdin's cave of Moroccan rugs, saxophones, stacks of sheet music and old portraits of people we have never met.
Just as we are about to eat, an elderly lady climbs the steps to the porch. "Hi, Isabella," he calls through the open window, and then she is standing at the end of our dinner table, wearing a natty straw bonnet and khaki shorts. "I've been on my own all day," she announces in her soft Boston accent. "I'm feeling a little lonely, so I thought I'd come by for a chat." She seems happy just to stand and soak in the atmosphere. "I used to love John McCormack," she tells me, "but I discovered Daniel O'Donnell, and then he had my heart."
Two couples having dinner and an older lady who is single. But we like odd numbers, and despite her taste in music we are happy when she sits down and stays for a while.
Alison Jameson's latest novel, Under My Skin, is published by Penguin, £10.99 in UK