Still, I am relatively fortunate. At least I can afford to rent on my tod, my ability to endure the horror of flatmates having ended abruptly in my twenties with a woman so neurotic she monitored not only her own, but my eating, and who required a daily pep talk before she could leave the house. One’s tolerance for this kind of malarkey tends to be short-lived, and yet the middle-aged flatmate has become a new cultural phenomenon.