WHEN I lived in Liverpool, I remember seeing the moving statue of Eleanor Rigby on her bench in Stanley Street.

The plaque reads: “Dedicated to all the Lonely People”. It recalls the song Paul McCartney wrote and that the Beatles released in 1966. “Oh, look at all the lonely people” goes the refrain, “where do they all come from?”

I took the funeral of my friend Pam this week. She was one of those lonely people and she told me how she would travel to Lakeside or Basildon Eastgate Centre most days because that’s where people were and she didn’t have to stay at home looking at the walls.

She enjoyed her work as an Avon lady and her friends in the pub and at the church because she loved a good chat. But it didn’t stop her being lonely any more than the thousands of others in our towns and villages that go home to a cold and empty house and long for company.

Pam had good neighbours and caring friends and when the end came she passed peacefully, trusting God and knowing there was hope beyond this “vale of tears”. Not all our lonely people experience such care and friendship. We need to look out for them. There’s more than you think.

Let’s all of us take the time to reach out to one another. Show them a stranger is just a friend you haven’t yet met. God bless you!