Hell if I want company I can watch Northern Exposure or Friends

Hell, if I want company I can watch Northern Exposure or Friends." In any case, he said, since he had to get to work by 7am he was usually in bed well before midnight.In a recent Mori opinion survey of their age- and income-group, nearly a third agreed with the statement: "I don't have time to spend cooking or preparing food." In the past 10 years, this has created a massive market for cook-chill TV suppers warmed in a microwave.Nick Herbert is a food consultant at Marks and Spencer. He said, "Meeting women at work is a minefield of office politics and political correctness. It's much easier and safer and less complicated to come here and buy for one. He was buying a bottle of cheap white wine and a takeaway supper. and four tins of cat food.A man I accosted in Marks and Spencer at closing time gave his name as Michael, and said he was a corporate banker.

They were buying food targeted at people too tired or lonely to cook for themselves, and with nobody at home willing to cook for them. One man, Roderick, was queuing at the check-out to pay for a French stick, a chunk of cheese, a mango, a box of strawberries, a six-pack of beer ... So when they leave work, these young, single professionals are at their time of maximum exposure, when the gaping emotional hole in their lives opens up before them.I watched three bachelors in a central London Sainsbury's just before 9pm last week. She regards work addiction as a form of obsession, which lies in a more deep-rooted fear of intimacy. They seem spiritually at sea.Take what is often most important to them: work. They operate in the high-pressured world of multi-skilled people, in delayered organisations.

If they are self-employed, they must devote themselves to building up their business. If they work for an employer, they cannot expect to stay with the same company for decades. A few years at most and they are on the move in search of more money, better prospects, higher promotion.The pursuit of money and ambition is used as a justification for their absurdly demanding working hours. They work to earn, but also because it provides the point to their lives They get anxious when they are away from work They go nowhere without their mobile phones and laptop PCs. "Technology was provided to buy more time and relaxation," said one tired young woman "But now we are accessible 24 hours a day.

Far from enjoying more leisure, I find there is no escape from work."Caroline Gielnik, a stress expert at the the Institute of Directors, believes that working late often forms a comfort zone for lonely people. Today's young singles are stressed, over-worked, and often simply sad They lack intimacy and the trust that goes with it They avoid emotional commitments. In the past, single young people seemed to hold out the promise of revolution and change, a better future They were idealistic and usually optimistic. It is not confined to music; it affects everything from the kind of houses that are being built to the growth of dating agencies, from the types of food that stock supermarket shelves to the kinds of holiday now on offer.The second distinguishing feature of the singles of the Nineties is that they are not hopeful. If anyone can be said to "have it all", it must surely be these 25- to 35-year-olds And they do have nearly everything - except intimacy. Loneliness is the price they pay for their high-flying lives. It's not new for the young and single to exert a powerful influence upon our culture, mainly through music and their sexual mores They have had that influence since the Fifties But two things stand out about the singles of the Nineties The first is that their influence is pervasive and powerful. These, you would think, are the winners of the Nineties, the favoured few who have survived recession, unemployment and redundancy.

They are young and well-qualified enough to take their pick of jobs. "We are all adventurers here, I suppose, and wild doings in wild countries appeal to us as nothing else could do. It is good to know that there remain wild corners of this dreadfully civilized world."Good to know, too, that although your grave has disappeared with a shift in the great Polar glacier, the photographs and diaries and the scientific discoveries - your real heritage - survive.. Haughty, power-dressed and still running on adrenalin after a 12-hour day in the office, young professionals in modish suits stalk the aisles of late-opening supermarkets looking for comfort food - and usually comfort alcohol as well - with which to settle on the sofa and relax for what little is left of the day. If you had succeeded and "fetched through" in March 1912, cod pyschologists would have had a less easy time.Looking at "Birdie", "Uncle Bill", "Soldier", "Teddy" and yourself staring out from Ponting's prints, one hears your telling words over one's shoulder.