‘Living alone’ to spiral
A WOMAN who lost her ring down a subway grate in New York just hours after the proposal thanked the world-famous NYPD yesterday for restoring the course of true love.
John Drennan and Daniella Anthony’s plight went viral after they were captured on CCTV scrabbling in vain for the sparkler.
Police retrieved the ring and cleaned it up after the Cambridge couple left the scene, believing they had lost it for good.
They realised their good luck after seeing publicity generated By CCTV footage of the couple showed them scrambling to find the ring, inset, just hours after they celebrated their engagement in New York, far left by the New York officers’ tweet of the footage, coupled with an appeal for information.
John, 36, had proposed a few hours before in Central Park.
He said: “We were walking back to the hotel. I can still visualise the ring – bouncing once, bouncing twice and then it was gone. In the end, we had no choice but to walk away and try to enjoy the rest of our weekend.”
A thrilled Daniella, 34, said: “We are so happy, we can’t believe it.” BRITAIN could be hit by an epidemic of loneliness as the number of people living alone soars, figures showed yesterday.
Households comprising just one person will increase by a quarter over the next 25 years from 7,057,049 in 2016 to 8,891,109 in 2041.
The number of over-90s – mainly women – will also double, according to the Office for National Statistics.
Around four times more women than men currently live in that age category with figures for 2016 showing 181,132 females compared to 59,924 men – but the gap is predicted to close.
Caroline Abrahams, of Age UK, said: “The older you get, the more likely you are to outlive those you’ve been closest to most of your life, increasing your risk of loneliness.”
Joanna Harkrader, of the ONS, said the figures reflect the potential impact of an ageing population.
Labour MP Rachel Reeves, co-chair of the Jo Cox Loneliness Commission, said: “As we live longer and as families live further apart there are more older people living alone without regular contact and communication with the people that they love.”