I will never live with anybody again, and that is not negotiable

Sixty three, and the one condition I will not move on is that I am never living with anybody again. I have done it twice, for decades each time, and I have since developed a serious fondness for a house that is entirely mine and stays exactly as I left it.

Out past the edge of London, in a village with a bus twice a day. Retired from a career in public health. I led in both marriages, the first badly and with no vocabulary for it, the second openly and a great deal better.

What I want now is a dynamic that runs on visits. Two or three days at a time, a couple of times a month, with structure that carries on in between by phone and by what he does at home without me. I am specific about that structure and I will write it down, because at my age I have stopped hoping people will guess.

I am fit and I intend to stay so, but I would be lying if I said age was not a factor in this. One of us will be ill at some point. I would rather start with a man who has already thought about that than one who finds the subject morbid and changes it.

Not looking for a live in arrangement, ever, and no amount of chemistry will shift it. Not looking for a man in his thirties, kindly. Not looking for anything at short notice, because the buses out here have no interest in what either of us wants.