In June, a bailiff found Anne Leitrim dead in her Bournemouth flat. Her body had been there for seven years. Her home was beside a communal garden and was on the ground floor, with two of the windows left open. But no one had come by. Lovely Scottish brogue she had, the neighbours remembered. I wondered how many neighbours I have who would come knocking on my door. I couldn’t think of any.
Then I bumped into a woman on the street. We struck up a conversation. “I know you,” she said. “You’re the guy on the mobile phone.” Was it just me, I wondered, or is this feeling of disconnection more common? A survey by the Office for National Statistics rated Britain the loneliness capital of Europe. Across the world, we are moving from the city of Ford, designed for cars, to the city of Facebook, in which we are connected but only virtually.
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