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Hill Cone says you have to be friends with yourself. "But you can't just jump into self-compassion. It's actually f***ing useless to read that you should be compassionate to yourself, because if you could, you would. You have to start by acknowledging that how you feel, whatever your problematic feelings are, are perfectly understandable.

"I think some people who say they're lonely, I think it might be more that they're actually feeling deep sorrow about the fact that life doesn't f***ing turn out how you expected it. You didn't get the thing, and it's not fair that you didn't get the thing. That's actually grief. Lonely is a label that is a bit more socially acceptable than grief."

I phoned my father. His father died when he was 29; a heart attack on holiday at the Greymouth Seaside Motor Camp. My nan had gone a few years earlier. I have memories of scrap wool peggy-square blankets; toast soldiers and soft-boiled eggs. My father seems surprised I want to talk about the loss of his parental anchors; the possibility he might have felt lonely.

"I wasn't unique. It was fairly common, in those days, to lose parents then."

Bruce Knight has always harboured Robinson Crusoe fantasies. When I was 30 and he was 50, he took a sole-charge Department of Conservation job on Stephens Island in the middle of Cook Strait. My mother eventually joined him, but there were six-week stretches with zero physical human contact, just voices on a radio, cellphone and staticky television.

"I realise I need people. But having been a bit of a mental loner, being on my own has never rattled me. Because it's my choice, I haven't got lonely."

The downside: "You've got to be respectful of your environment, how you're doing and feeling. If you feel a bit unwell, for example, you've got to keep your head together. You know it's indigestion, but you can easily tell yourself it's a heart attack."

And the joy? "Being able to have a sleep when you want. Being able to cook what you want and eat what you want, even if it's not good for you. And if you don't want to clean your mess up, you don't have to. Not having to conform to any rules but those you set yourself."

I get off the phone and smile. My dad. The original napping, frying rebel. Days later, it occurs to me I'd never considered my mum might have been lonely when he went away.

Women, the popular narratives tell us, are better at being on our own, because we hardly ever are. We're social glue; connectors. In fact, that General Social Survey showed women were more likely to feel lonely than men. Other factors that increased the probability of feeling lonely included being a recent immigrant, identifying as Asian, having poor mental health, or a lower economic standard of living. In the United Kingdom, researchers found chronic loneliness carried the same health risk as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

What does lonely look like? Canvas asked Robyn McGill, president of the New Zealand Association of Counsellors.

"We could be quite angry. At things, and the situation. Quite gnarly with friends and family who manage to hang on to things that we have not. We could get into a lot of self-blame: 'I'm in deficit, I'm pathetic, I'm useless, I don't have much to offer anyone therefore no one wants to be around me.'

"We could become cling-monkeys to other people, and just talk about ourselves excessively; we might get angry around social causes, suffer anxiety, sleeplessness or overcompensate with food, or go mad and join every club going."

Humans want to be mirrored, she says. To be understood and accepted.

"But if you're just looking for other people to tell you who you are, you're not going to find out. You have to have some knowledge about yourself. Who am I? Why can I stand on this ground and feel solid and good about myself?"

If I'm wanting other people to tell me who I am I could be continually disappointed because they won't get it right. I've got to have some sense of myself, within myself.
Robyn McGill
McGill, 64, lives alone. She likes eating out on her own; going to movies on her own. She knows where and how to find people, but, more importantly, she says, she knows who she is.

"If I'm wanting other people to tell me who I am, and affirm me, I could be continually disappointed because they won't get it right. I can't keep looking for others to tell me I'm okay. I've got to have some sense of myself, within myself."

The loneliest of the lonely? Younger people, aged 15-29, reported higher levels than any other group, with 18 per cent saying they felt lonely all, or most of the time. People aged 65 years and over were least likely (11 per cent) to feel like that.

Ken Hollay lives in the Far North. He usually has a cup of Bell leaf tea in the afternoons. Today, it's a Bundaberg ginger beer and a phone interview with Canvas from his home in the the town to which his Cockney parents emigrated in the late 1800s.

"I never asked them why they did that. It's so annoying now, I think 'why didn't I ask?' Because I'm the last of our family now. All my older brothers and sisters have passed on and there's no Hollay in the phone book anymore. My two sisters-in-law who acquired that name have passed on. I'm the last of the Mohicans and I'm 92."

Hollay was married for 25 years. He's been living alone for 29 and a half years, in the house he helped build, with the doors that he finished varnishing the night before his wedding.

"We went off on our honeymoon to Auckland and when we came home we moved into our house. We had to go to Auckland to buy a table and chairs."

He has no family, but every single morning, the phone rings. Hollay is one of 1200 New Zealanders who use the St John Caring Caller service that connects people who live on their own, with volunteers who phone to make sure their clients are okay.

"We're never allowed to know where they live and we just get their Christian names," says Hollay. He signed up, fearing he might have a medical emergency in the middle of the night. He wanted to know that, come morning, someone would raise the alarm.

"I think I've had 10 years with this one caller, John. He's a farmer and sometimes he's got a truck coming with cattle so he might ring me quite early, like six or seven, but normally at half past eight. Every day. This morning we were discussing Kiwibank and should it be sold or should it not. Other times we just say hello. He says 'are you all right' and I say 'yeah, I'm all right' and he says 'righty-oh then, cheerio'. And that's all there is to it. But mostly we do have a yarn about something."

Hollay is not lonely. Why not? "I'm just trying to think about that now," he says, surprise in his voice.

"I'm perfectly happy to sit in my big chair and it's amazing how your mind can wander, and you think about things in the past and things that you might do, and you doze off to sleep, wake up a couple hours later and carry on. It's a great life."

Tell Hollay young people are lonely and he's even more surprised. "Why would that be? I tell you what I do notice about the young people these days. They expect somebody to entertain them. When I was a kid I couldn't get home from school quick enough to do alterations to my trolley, or to build a bigger and better kite or to build a tin canoe for down in the creek.

"We were never idle. But now you see these kids kicking empty drink cans along the gutters. Why do you think that is? Is it below their dignity to fly a kite or ride a trolley?"

Hollay estimates he goes to seven Christmas dinners, and seven mid-winter Christmas dinners every year. Clubs, lodges, organisations for the elderly. It's important to belong, to watch and listen to the news, to "get out and see what's going on around the world".

But he has stopped looking at newspaper death notices. Too many of his cobbers in the listings, he says. He has stopped going to funerals. And he doesn't require anybody to attend his. It's in his will.

According to Statistics New Zealand, most Kiwis - 43 per cent - can count between five and 10 supportive family and friends; 42 per cent have 11 or more. Five per cent just one or two and only one per cent have no one.

Jean Cartwright, 71, sits in an armchair in her West Auckland living room. Knick-knacks line the windowsill, grandchildren's portraits are on the walls and her husband is doing the dishes.

"Well," she says, "Twenty-four hours is a long time on your own. Seven days a week. Christmas. Birthdays. You know, they become anxious and they're frightened. I think a lot of them are frightened that should they pass away they could be left there for days, weeks and months. You do hear of that."

Cartwright has been a St John Caring Caller for 12 years. She's had six clients. Right now, she's working with a man called Ken (not Hollay).

"In some ways they become extended family. He's just part of our life. At eight o'clock my alarm goes off and I call him."

They talk for anywhere between five and 45 minutes. Ken gives her gardening advice; she asks about his day. Sport, history and news. He has a "really good niece" who is in frequent contact, but lives in a different city.

"By being somebody there, a voice, it stops some of the loneliness. I know that he looks forward to that call every day, and we have a good laugh and a good talk, and he's a lovely person."

Cartwright calls, until there is no one to pick up. Two of her people have died, one while she was on holiday.