The necessities of having a perfect night on your lonesome...

• The house to oneself
• Engagements to blow off, ideally with no excuse at all bar "I'm sorry, I don't care for it tonight"
• Booze
• Nick Drake to play on the stereo
• A stereo to play Nick Drake on
• A hot bath standing by with a glass of wine and a book on the side
• A copy of any of the three most beautifully written books in the world (by which I mean E.M Forster's Maurice, F.Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby or Graham Greene's The End of the Affair)
• The ability to consume all of the above simultaneously while maintaining a glass in each hand