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So, last night I went on a date. When I got home, I was a little bit tipsy, and I signed into an online London forum to which I contribute occasionally. Someone had written a very amusing anecdote about an alcohol-fuelled incident that had occurred during their evening. Being a generous soul, I thought I should share my experience, so I wrote the following: "I am also drunk. I went on a date with a guy who I will not be seeing again. He reminded me, in almost every way, of Michael Portillo. The way in which he did not remind me of Michael Portillo is that there is a tiny, dark, dark, dark portion of my mind that somehow tricks the rest of me into thinking that, if he were the last man on earth, I might briefly fancy Michael Portillo. The guy tonight didn’t have that quality."

On reflection, this seems a little unfair. Last night's date didn't remind me that much of Michael Portillo. He's not a politician, for a start. And we did have a nice time, although the conversation was rather more intense than I'd like. But... I don't think there was any chemistry really. And more importantly, he plays a lot of golf, which is a deal-breaker if ever I know one. Finally: he doesn't like cheese. Who doesn't like cheese, for goodness' sake?! The idea of forming a meaningful relationship with someone who won't lie in front of the TV with me on a Sunday afternoon gently moaning about how incredible it would be to have some garlic mozzarella bread brought to us by a teenager on a moped is risible.

So - that was Thursday. And now it's nearly the weekend. I am moments away from heading towards TopShop on Oxford Street, where I will meet Emily. Then we'll meet two others for tapas in Shepherd's Market. Then we'll go to see the new Bond film. Exciting. Tomorrow and Sunday I will be attending this which was brilliant when I went last year. And tomorrow night I'm going to have fun in a bar in Westbourne Grove with a few friends. It's all go - I'm already exhausted after a busy week and don't quite know where I'll find the energy. But as dad says, we'll be dead a long time. Happy days.

Love on the Northern Line

Maybe it's hormones, but yesterday, I was listening to the current Elbow album on my commute, and I had tears in my eyes twice in the first three songs. I'd never heard it before, and it just caught me unawares - the guy's incredible voice, the unexpected intervals, the gorgeous strings and instrumentation - they all combined to make my underground experience a little bit more emotional than normal.

And the lyrics. I must confess something that is unforgiveable for a writer: I normally forget to listen to lyrics. I'm all about the melody. But these words... They struck me from my very first play, and they made me vow never to get married to anyone who doesn't feel the same way about me as the writer did about the mysterious girl to whom he's singing. Which is a tall order, given that he sang "You're the only thing in any room you're ever in" and "The street is singing with my feet and the dawn gives me a shadow I know to be taller. All down to you, dear. Everything has changed" and "We kissed like we invented it. And now I know what every step is for: to lead me to your door."

Sigh. I preferred me when I was flippant.

Chivalry: if it's not dead, should we kill it?

Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I went to the top of my emotional rollercoaster and then plummeted down to the nadir of the metaphorical canyon that opens up in my soul every once in a while. Then I was fine, but just really busy. And now I'm still fine and still busy, but I can't leave it any longer to write or else no one will ever click on my blog again and I will feel abandoned and the canyon will come a-calling once again.

So. There was the boy - yes, the one I was emailing last week. Things with him are now over, so I am free to write as much as I like about him without fear of retribution. He was (briefly) lovely. Very, very good looking. And quirky and interesting. And he seemed to be extremely taken by me. Despite my best efforts to remain distant and coquettish (always my strong suits), he won me round by emailing the longest, funniest messages to me on a very regular basis, and always seeming to want to spend more and more time with me whenever we met up. Which was admittedly only twice. But, you know how these things can spiral out of control. I did all I could not to get excited, but at some point on our second date, possibly shortly before he initiated planning our third, I became really quite hooked on him. And I can identify the precise moment it happened. Reader: he walked on the road side of the pavement.

I hope for your sake that that phrase means absolutely nothing to you. For the lucky uninitiated, walking on the road side of the pavement is a pathetically archaic etiquette practice, whereby men walk on the side of the pavement nearest the traffic, ostensibly to protect women from the splashes and dirt thrown up by the horses and carriages driving by. Today, it is rare that a man walks to the road side of me. My father does it. So does my friend Donald. But it is unusual. And every cell in my brain knows that that is as it should be. It is a ridiculous practice. I mean, perhaps when it is pouring with rain, maybe then, it could be justified. But really - it's outdated and anachronistic, other synonyms - and possibly degrading. Yet, oh, it made me go weak at the knees. When he later gestured towards the wall seat at our restaurant table and said 'Ladies face the room', I practically swooned.

What is it with me and manners? On paper, I know they're ridiculous. They go against my politics, my ideas of female equality and my rational brain. And, as Sarah pointed out the other day, there is even something a bit artful about those moves, as though a boy knows too much, perhaps something a bit dangerous about chivalry, a warning sign?, although I think that depends on the boy. And yet, and yet - I love it when a man carries my bag without being asked. I love being helped on with my coat. I love being given the best seat. I love having the car door opened. And I love, love, love walking on the not-road-side. It's indefensible, I know - but I think it might be something to do with the fact that I am not petite, physically or in character - when I am made to feel like a lady who is in need of protection, even it is from the invisible mud that is not splattering from the carriages that are not passing us, it fulfills some dark need in my nature to be cherished. Sad but true. Am I evil? I'm sorry.

Anyway - so he walked on the road side of the pavement, and then he let me sit with my face to the room, and then he kissed me and then I went home and then the next day he said he didn't want to see me any more. Retard.

I'm fine now, really, and I have four - count 'em! - dates on the horizon. Obviously I swore off all men after the recent rejection debacle, in order to rebuild my self-esteem on my own, but as soon as someone else asked me out, my self-esteem miraculously returned to former levels and I am now feeling chipper and robust once more. It'd be lovely if my happiness didn't depend quite so much on boys fancying me, but hey, I'm a 31 year old girl with hourglass curves and lots of lovely dresses: it'd be a shame to let this all go to waste.

Come here often?

After a fairly standard day at my desk, the last ten minutes have been a flurry of email hilarity as a boy and I have been bantering at top speed. The internet dating site where we met has a facility whereby, if someone sends you a message and you are too boring, stupid or cowardly to think of something interesting to say back, you can choose one of their homemade 'one-liners' to send instead.

The one-liners offered by the site are as follows:

I'm interested so far. Tell me more about yourself.
Thanks, but I don't think we're right for each other.
I think our age differences would be too large.
When I said absolutely crucial, I meant it!
I'm focusing on conversations that have already started.
Thanks, but I think I've already met my match here.
I'm very busy right now, but I'll get back to you soon.

For some reason, we decided to make up our own one-liners that we felt might be more truthful and/or useful:

Admit it, those photos are at least 10 years old.
Sorry, you bore the shit out of me.
I'm concentrating on less ugly people.
You are old and you probably smell.
I find the fact that you think you could pull me offensive.
I wouldn't go on a date with you even if I'd been denied human contact for several decades.
Your self-satisfaction oozes from every pixel of your profile and I find you abhorrent.
I'm afraid you are too unfashionable for me. River Island is not an acceptable T-shirt brand.
I'm currently emailing people with more potential, but if they turn out to be no-goes, I might consider you later.

It's sad these aren't actually on offer on the site since, using lessons learned at the Simon Cowell school of honesty, these might actually prevent people continuing on their merry delusional way, unable to work out why no one has replied to their attempts to make contact. Who says online dating isn't fun?

Monday round-up

A very sweet anonymous poster commented that I am 'like Carrie from Sex and the City' and that I should continue writing about dating. Now, flattery will get you almost anywhere with me - but I think on this matter, it might be better to wait. I'll reminisce in a while once the dust has settled, I promise. But for now: things seem to be good.

Exciting news for me is that my parents are taking me to Paris at the beginning of December. I haven't been for five years and I can't wait. Last time I went I bought a green short sleeved jumper featuring an embroidered pair of sunglasses, and a V-neck sweater vest with knitted penguins all over it - vintage purchases I still wear and love - so hopefully this trip will be equally fruitful. I suppose we'll have to do something cultural as well, between the eating and the shopping. Things must've changed over there in the past five years though - if any loyal Faithful have any tips of Must Do tourist things, please leave a comment, bearing in mind that my parents will be present, so fetish nights and/or Full Moon party type events possibly not suitable.

Having kicked off with a rather lovely Friday night, my weekend was really quite ace. Saturday was spent mooching, hungover, with Emily, before I went to meet Joanna in Westbourne Park and talked non-stop about Friday night for about 25 minutes. Then we went to Dan and Clare's engagement party, celebrating a couple who were just destined to be together. I am extremely and genuinely delighted for them. Selfishly, I was also really glad that they had an excuse to throw a party, because it was the first time I'd seen a lot of that posse for months, and I was like a butterfly on coke, chatting to as many people as I possibly could, laughing far too loudly and struggling to check my emails on my iPhone using Fuller's wifi. Pah. Then Vanessa and I took the tube home and, during a nine minute wait on the platform at Elephant and Castle, took photographs of ourselves reflected in the perspex covering of the tube map so that we looked like a) Cabbage Patch Kids and then b) Cyclops. Our silent, hiccupping hysteria was possibly incredibly annoying for the three other people waiting forlornly on the platform.

Then on Sunday, Emily, Joanna, Kate, Ses and I went to the Robert Capa exhibition at the Barbican, which was fascinating - or at least, in the spirit of true self-obsession, I found my reaction to it fascinating, in that the exhibition of Capa's famous photographs was teamed with photographs from modern warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan, and unexpectedly, I found the recent pictures infinitely more affecting. And I much preferred the photos taken by Capa's girlfriend, which seemed to have a more personal, studied focus - not like warfare then. I did understand why Capa went for the blurred action shots, and his images of the D-Day landings were amazing - what these journalists go through is incredible - but one of the modern collections featured a wall of photos with subjects ranging from Iraqi families wearing Santa hats to brutal attacks by American soldiers - now that I write it, the contrast is possibly a bit schmaltzy but in situ it was very striking.

Despite gallery flop, Em and I somehow found the energy to schlep over to Cheshire St for a quick trip to Beyond Retro where I found some amazing new items among the warehouse's heaving rails. Very smug. I went home, collapsed onto the sofa, watched Saturday's X Factor (gripping) and then realised that my flat was a tip and that it was being seen by someone who's never seen it before on Tuesday. Consequently, my shoe pile had to be confronted. I laid them all out for the first time and I'm ashamed to say that, in a display worthy of a modern day Imelda, the pairs covered the floor around three sides of my bed. It was extraordinary. I did a cull, and then counted what was left. And... I don't know if I can just come out and admit how many are left... but if you take the number 200 and then times it by six and then divide it by the square root of 25, and then minus the sum of 170 and 36, and then add the amount you get when you multiply 3 and 5, that's how many pairs of shoes and boots I now possess. In my defence, I suffer from an unnamed but special condition due to having size 10 feet - due to an almost total shortage of shoes in my size during my younger years, I now compulsively fall upon any footwear I find that fits me today, panicking that if I don't buy it immediately, I'll never find anything like it again. It's an addiction - don't criticise me: pity me.

LLFF no longer AWOL

Sorry for protracted absence but it's been a weird week. I haven't been very focused. Fun though... I kept meaning to write - there was the guy who leant his entire bodyweight on me on the tube, completely unnecessarily, between Borough and Bank. I kept pushing back against him to try and get him to move but either he wasn't picking up on my subtle signals or he was enjoying it. Urgh. I arrived at work feeling violated. Then there was the guy who was playing his iPod really loudly which is not, in itself, unusual or remarkable - but this guy was actually shouting over his own music to speak to his girlfriend. Why he couldn't press pause, or remove his headphones, was beyond me. I tutted fairly loudly at that one. Still no sign of the missing cat so I'm feeling very sad about that. It's been ten days now. Lower lip out. I think the reason I haven't been writing is because I've pretty much banned myself from writing about boys until I know for sure that either I'm never going to see them again or we get close enough that they find out about this blog and accept its existence - and since boys, as a topic, is pretty much been all I've been thinking about, I've felt like writing about something else would be unrepresentative and, in a small way, untruthful / out and out lies.

Then this afternoon I did something completely un-boy-related that was naughty and struck me as something that should be recorded. I was in that paragon of the posh modern British shopping experience, New Look, and chanced across a lovely green dress. "I'll have that," I thought to myself - but there was only one in my size, and it had a button missing. Not just any button, but a rather large 'feature' button, one of four that was stitched to the neckline. Unsure, I went to try it on, found it to be wondrous, and realised that I must now address the issue of the missing button. I asked the comatose shop assistant whether they had any more dresses in my size. She looked at me as though I'd just grounded her for a month. Speaking as if addressing someone hard of hearing or irrepairably stupid, she drawled, "Wha'ever's out there's all we've got." I explained I wanted to get a replacement button. She repeated her last phrase. I asked if they could order one in. "No," she replied, "cos it's a concession innit," as if that explained everything. Then she directed me to the tills where, she claimed, I would be offered a discount. I went back to the rack where the dresses were, to check again that there were none in my size. There weren't. There was one in another size though. With the button I wanted. So I took it. Not the dress. Just the button. I pulled it, and it was suddenly in my hand. Those four year olds who made it obviously were being thrifty with the thread. Was it stealing? Not really - I paid for the dress fair and square. Was it wrong? Yes. Do I feel bad? Yes. Would I do it again? Yes. Do you hate me? I hope not.

Since I returned to my desk, Sara and I have been email bantering about internet acronyms. These developed a while ago on online forums, where oft-used phrases were shortened to facilitate quick typing. Most people will be familiar with LOL (laugh out loud) but a whole new stream of popular acronyms have sprung up in recent years. Common favourites are LMFAO (laughing my fat ass off), ROFL (rolling on floor laughing) and IYSWIM (if you see what I mean) - but there are also more random ones that are used on individual sites only and are yet to 'catch on'. I was recently on an online London forum when someone typed something really gross - and the next person replied PSIOEWRS. This, I was later informed, stands for 'pokes self in own eye with rusty spoon'. Sara and I decided to make our own. Here are our attempts:

POWUE - passes out with unjustified excitement
PUBAHD - Panics unnecessarily before a hot date
EITA - Enagages in text anxiety
WTCOMABDBUTS - Within the context of making a bad decision but unable to stop
HFHA - Heading for heart ache
OIBPARBS - Obviously I'm being paranoid and ridiculous but still
IKWDTAHTBBWM - I know we've discussed this a hundred times but bear with me
YIRATI -Yes I really am this insecure
IKIGTOTABUINIRBD - I know I've got ten of these already but I need it, recession be damned
IIBTIFTW - Is it bad that I feel this way?
SIBS - Should I be sectioned?
PDSMTAA - Please don't send me to an asylum

Feel free to add your own in the Comments. Right. I'm off to PUBAHD. Fare thee well.

Introducing: Goldie

I told you he was amazing. Isn't he the most incredible purchase there ever was? Loving sigh. Part of me knows that it is wrong that he makes me so happy, but hey, what can you do. I'm in an especially vacuous mood having just watched the Sex and the City movie with Emily, which had a mediocre plot as expected - but the clothes... oh! The clothes. It was vintage porn - huge corsages, pearls with Eighties mini-dresses, and a Vivienne Westwood wedding meringue. Men should not be allowed to watch that film. It reinforces everything that they must think is awful and superficial about girls: that we're fashion obsessed, over-romantic idiots who only want to get married and have babies. I'm not denying there's a grain of truth in that summary - but there really is so much more to us. The movie, on the other hand, manages to distill femininity down into a deceptive 'essence', leaving out the context and the depth and the... real story. Then again, anyone who is really prepared to form their opinion of women from the SATC movie needs their head read.

Right - got to go. It's late, and Goldie needs a last walk before bedtime.

Hasta La Vista

Those who know me in Real Life may be aware of my boss. He is Swiss German and I absolutely adore him in a way that is completely and utterly platonic. We both have varying levels of OCD and I find working for him about as pleasant as I could expect working for any human to be. Far and away my favourite thing about him is his accent, which is identical to Arnold Schwarzenegger's in both tone and vocabulary. Like Arnie, my boss seems to prefer to use as few words as possible when communicating with others. To this end, we have developed a series of acronyms to help us label the people who come to visit him - he was calling everyone a 'pain in the ass'; eventually this became shortened to PITA and, inevitably, super PITAs became SPITAs. A personal highlight was when he walked into my office after a meeting, handed me a pile of papers and said only, 'Shred.' It was like The Terminator meets David Brent.

But today was an absolute gem. I went into his office to ask him something, and he was emailing. There was an open jar of macadamia nuts on his desk.
'Can I have one of these, please?' I asked. He didn't respond. 'I'll take that as a yes then,' I said, taking a nut and popping it in my mouth. A few seconds later, he pressed send on his email and his attention refocused.
'What was that you asked me?' he said.
'Whether I could have a nut,' I said. And in classic Arnie voice, he drawled,
'You have already taken one. Obsolete question. Inefficient use of resources.'
Honestly, it's moments like those that make me want to work for him forever.

I had to do an internal online training course about money laundering today. Like you, I wouldn't have expected that to be filled with interesting anecdotes, but I read that money laundering is so prevalent that, if it were an economy, it would be the tenth biggest in the world. Makes you think, innit.

Sad news from me is that I know someone who is genuinely lost looking for fish: my cat, Dennis. Well, he's my parents' cat really - and he ran away this afternoon when my Dad was picking him up from the cattery. We don't know where he is, he's in a strange area and it's all very scary. Fingers crossed, his greedy stomach will drive him to make contact with some humans very soon.

Emotional rollercoaster

I'm not sure this photograph is one of my better ones, but you'll have to trust me that it illustrates perfectly the idiocy that is displayed around this wonderful planet all too frequently. It was taken yesterday evening on the ground floor of Zara Homes, Regent St. It is the third or fourth time I've visited this establishment, and the third or fourth time I've been stopped in my tracks by the lettering on their stairwell. On each occasion, I browse the ground floor, and then meander towards the staircase to continue my shopping experience. To help me decide whether to go up or, indeed, down, I peer at the steel art deco letters on the wall - but instead of telling me what I might find, should I walk up or down the stairs, the sign merely has an arrow pointing in an 'up' direction, labelled 'First Floor', and an arrow pointing 'down', labelled 'Lower Ground Floor'. I mean. Has it come to this? That when we're on the ground floor, we need instruction labels to help us know that, by walking up a flight of stairs, we will find the First Floor? Or that by walking down, we may come across a basement? Growl. Like any good shopper, I went both up and down the stairs, possibly as a result of the mystery and intrigue provided by the lack of labelling (perhaps this was their intention), and my rage died down when I spotted the most incredible gold leather sausage dog. It has shot straight into my top five favourite purchases of 2008, along with my Bookworm shelf, my sugar bowl from Anthropologie in Seattle, my cherry blossom fairy lights and my carpet.

My life has been extremely weird since approx. last Thursday when overnight, any hint of the summer ended and it suddenly became Autumn. As soon as I started wearing my delicious pea-green coat and little blue hat, so beloved last winter, I started experiencing the most overpowering feelings of deja vu and nostalgia, so intense as to be almost unpleasant. The Faithful will know that I am up there in the World's Most Unspiritual, and weird sensations such as these are unheard of in my past. I think it's something about having an August break-up and then going on a couple of interesting dates, which is precisely what I was doing a year ago - I feel like a completely different person in so many ways, very much happier, older and wiser than I was in 2007, but history still repeats itself...

Last summer, I went on a weekend in Devon with a group of friends and remember feeling startlingly relieved to return to the varieties of London. And similarly, this weekend just past, I went to stay with a girlfriend in Wiltshire, who is now married with three gorgeous children and three dogs. I had a fantastic time helping out and going for long walks, interspersed with drinking Cava and watching The X Factor, but there was just no denying the breath-taking hit of relief when I boarded the Bakerloo line at Paddington and looked around me at all the different, unfamiliar faces - people from every walk of life, going through every permutation of experience. It is just impossible to feel alone in London. Whatever you're going through - someone else has got it worse, someone else has it better, someone else has been through it before. I never feel isolated here - but the anonymity also allows one to have time to oneself, soul-space to consider and grow. In the countryside, the geographical space is beautiful and wonderful and energising - but the lack of people mean that there is an intense claustrophobia, a blinkeredness that, while it may also exist here in London, is so much more easy to avoid in the Big Smoke. The dream of retiring to the country is popular for many - but I'm a City girl through and through and I'm proud of it.

So I was feeling very odd. But then last night was the start of the new choir term and it was so incredibly lovely to see everyone again that I felt almost emotional. And we sang Christmas music which just filled me with atheistic joy. And then today, I received an email from a prospective suitor, a 46 year old currently living '15 miles north-west of New York' who effectively sent me his CV, including his diet, his exercise regime, his background (where his parents were born and where his mother died) and the fact that he is looking for a permanent relationship. Terrifying. I won't be dating him but it made for interesting reading. I showed Laura his photo, which is admittedly not the most reassuring, and she said:
'Jane, he looks like a serial killer.'
'What does a serial killer look like?!'
'That.'
I had to concede that he had a guilty mouth. Sad really, but what can you do. Thankfully I have also received messages from other young men who sound lovely. And, just in case, I'm keeping schtum about that this time! And then I received a phonecall from Westminster council, admitting that they'd been idiots, and dropping the charges against me for when they towed my car from Soho Square back in May, and so I'm going to be refunded £260. All that and my unbelievable gold dachshund - ah me! All of a sudden, life is good again and I am appreciative.

26 hours later

It's been an interesting few hours in my head. No change externally, you understand - still the same unstyled blonde hair, glasses, eyeliner, Chanel No. 5 lass you know and possibly love (virtually or actually) - but my mind's been a-whirring like a spinning jenny on crack.

As I wrote yesterday, me and the guy I dated on Wednesday night exchanged a few emails; nothing much, you understand, just a bit of light-hearted banter. We were talking (harmlessly, I believed) about Googling people you've met, to see what comes up. And then, suddenly, around lunchtime yesterday, he vanished - and I haven't heard from him since. No big deal, I thought - maybe he's working, or maybe he's just not interested and wants to draw a line under it quickly. Meanwhile, I wrote my blog, confidently believing that, unless I had given him the address, or the name, or my Facebook account, the guy I'd dated wouldn't be able to find his way here.

But this morning, just to be certain, I Googled myself - first name, surname. And it turns out that a link to my blog is about fifth down on the list. Call me stupid, but I simply had no idea that this was the case. And, although there's a chance that he hasn't found it, I'm pretty sure that explains why he did a Houdini.

Part of me is fairly pragmatic about it - if he can't handle my honesty/candour, then it was never going to work out anyway. Part of me is aware that not everyone is as up front as I am. I'm pretty sure that if things were the other way round, for example, and I'd read something similar about myself, I'd be flattered: clearly I'm a lot less private than some people, and I can't deny that I would enjoy the spotlight of another's attention.

But all this has thrown up a fair bit of thinking about the nature of this blog. What is it for, exactly? Why do I write it? How honest do I need to be? I certainly don't want it to be attached to my name any longer on Google - for professional reasons if nothing else, I need to be able to complain about being coma-inducingly bored at work without worrying that a colleague can read about it and then report me to some higher power. So clearly it's time to go completely anonymous.

But, even with no names mentioned, is it wrong to write about my personal life? Perhaps I need to be more understanding of other people's need for privacy. My bare-all approach is clearly one of the things that I (and, I've been told, others) enjoy about this blog, and I know that previous boyfriends have enjoyed receiving coverage on these pages - but I understand that it's not everyone's cup of tea. Well, Mr South Africa, if I offended you, I'm sincerely sorry, that was never my intention. And to others in the past, if I've written something I shouldn't have about you, I apologise. Perhaps I screwed up - I'm still not sure. But this is me: I've blustered through 31 years on this planet, speaking loudly, sometimes without thinking, making mistakes, putting my size ten feet in it, but all the while, trying my absolute hardest at life, learning from errors, laughing when I can, attempting above all to have fun with this one life that I have been given, and not take things too seriously. Somehow I don't think I'm going to change any time soon.

Right - now that's off my chest, what else has been happening? I had a lovely dinner with Ness last night, lovely in the conversation and company department, less lovely in the nourishment department as I overcooked the poached eggs (disappointing), although I redeemed myself with dessert. My ankle is on the mend but is still painful, the Thai green curry at Pod is the most delicious thing in the history of takeaway lunches and I cannot WAIT for this weekend, when I'm off to the countryside to visit Nicole. The last time I saw her she had a two week old daughter - now she has three children in total, who arrived in such quick succession that I'm finding the whole thing rather confusing. Although possibly not as confusing as she is, I'll warrant. I am taking three bottles of Cava to celebrate the arrival of each of the offspring so that should lubricate us on our way down Memory Lane.

October already

So I spent the first half of this week thinking I may have some mild form of ME. Totally listless, desperately tired every morning, uninspired to write, my flat becoming gradually messier for the first time, washing up and laundry left undone - all very unlike me. But I've made it to bed by 11pm the last three nights and am now feeling a lot more in the land of the non-ME sufferers.

Other than exhaustion, and once I recovered from my SuperSized date on Saturday, I've had a good week and feel full of the joys of autumn. The financial crisis has continued apace, but my boss remains calm and confident on the whole, so I am taking my lead from him and trying not to worry about my paycheque. My left foot (the one I injured running) is now fine; my right foot on the other hand (the one I injured in another way) is still bandaged and bruised - and not helped by the fact that I whacked it hard against a metal chair leg in my office yesterday morning. The resulting lack of ability to exercise hasn't helped my mood, but I'm hoping to be back, if not pounding the pavements of London, certainly enjoying Mountain Pose on a yoga mat, by next week.

And also - I went on another date last night. I know! Two dates in five nights - punchy! This guy was (and remains) South African, and was actually attractive (although I admit my tasteometer may have been blunted by last weekend and I may just have been grateful that he didn't need to go to a specialist shop to buy his jeans) and we had a nice time. He is clever and well-travelled and interesting and funny, all positive things. I am wary about him, however, as his internet profile said he is 'possibly too charming for his own good' and he did offer to 'walk me home', an idea that I quashed very early on. I can't believe anyone would fall for such ridiculous rubbish, but when I asked what percentage of girls would let him come home with them on a first date, he said fifty! I am gobsmacked by this. Obviously, he could be lying in order to make the idea more persuasive - but even if he's exaggerating by a fair bit, the idea that even one girl would be stupid enough to let a complete stranger, albeit one who is charming and attractive, into their home after only one evening together is completely terrifying. I don't blame him for having a go - he's male, after all, and I did look very pretty in my dress - but really. Anyway, he's now off to South Africa for work until the end of October so although we've exchanged emails today and he's tried (and failed) to befriend me on Facebook (Yes! Of course! Have a look at all my photos from the past two years of my life, read all the messages my friends have sent me - and then click on the link to my blog and find out everything I've done since November 2006! That's a healthy start to any blossoming relationship!), I'm not holding my breath about this evolving into anything else. It's just nice to know there are still some handsome, intelligent men out there who haven't already been frogmarched down the aisle.