{"id":275,"date":"2013-10-22T10:45:06","date_gmt":"2013-10-22T09:45:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/alisonstenning\/?p=275"},"modified":"2013-10-22T11:09:39","modified_gmt":"2013-10-22T10:09:39","slug":"on-loneliness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/alisonstenning\/on-loneliness\/","title":{"rendered":"On loneliness"},"content":{"rendered":"

I just returned to my office after teaching an introductory session on relationships to our MA Human Geography students to find a Twitter link to this article <\/a>by Aditya Chakrabortty in The Guardian.<\/p>\n

Chakrabortty reflects on this government’s record on fighting loneliness, in the light of Health Minister Jeremy Hunt’s recent speech<\/a>. Chakrabortty argues that “Such stats [about the health hazards of loneliness]\u00a0should make tackling isolation a public-health priority for any government. This one, however, seems to be doing its best to increase loneliness: its bedroom tax and housing-benefit cuts are wrenching families out of their communities and driving them into other neighbourhoods, even other cities.”<\/p>\n

But having just been talking to our MA students about relationships and about nature and value of relationships in the city, I was drawn to Chakrabortty’s discussion of the desperately sad story of Joyce Vincent, a 38 year old Londoner found dead in her flat in 2006, three years after she had died. Chakrabortty writes that “she had sisters, mates, former colleagues and ex-boyfriends. Those social circles appear to have failed her.”<\/p>\n

Joyce Vincent’s life and death became the focus of a documentary film by filmmaker Carol Morley, Dreams of a Life<\/a>. According to Chakrabortty (I haven’t seen the film yet), Morley’s film “shows city living as a series of weak links, forgettable friendships and single people getting by in their single housing units. By the end of it, you not only understand how a person can disappear from view; you wonder how many others suffer the same fate.”<\/p>\n

The reviews and discussions of Morley’s film (see Philip French<\/a>, and two pieces by Peter Bradshaw\u00a0here<\/a> and here<\/a>, for example) pick up on many of the same themes and questions. And Carol Morley herself talks about them here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I don’t have much to add at this stage but this story and these questions of loneliness in the city struck me hard as I returned from teaching about these very things.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just returned to my office after teaching an introductory session on relationships to our MA Human Geography students to find a Twitter link to this article by Aditya Chakrabortty in The Guardian. Chakrabortty reflects on this government’s record on … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4974,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[27,26,3,28],"class_list":["post-275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ideas","tag-joyce-vincent","tag-loneliness","tag-relationships","tag-the-city"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/alisonstenning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/alisonstenning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/alisonstenning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/alisonstenning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4974"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/alisonstenning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/alisonstenning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":281,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/alisonstenning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275\/revisions\/281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/alisonstenning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/alisonstenning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/alisonstenning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}