Fed up of being interrogated on your single status?
Me too!
This one is for you...
Unbound 2017
THE BAD ROMANCE RETORT REPERTOIRE
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The Hookup #5
Love is a game I’ve lost. So now I must date, which, if you ask me, is an exhausting, undignified, seemingly neverending bout of musical chairs. One day the music will stop, and if I don’t want to end up alone, I must run round and round, trying to snag a man before they all disappear.
Everything is speeded up, exactly like it was when I was an asthmatic six-year-old, and instinct dictates that I should drop to the floor, refuse to move, stick my fingers in my ears and howl: “But I don’t want any of these chairs. I want that shambolic excuse for a recliner over there, which isn’t even part of this damned charade, since another girl’s bloody sitting on it.”
But to confess to such thoughts, or act in such a way, is stupid. Hopelessly defeatist. Everyone tells me I have to get up and carry on. So I sprint faster and faster. Become dizzier and dizzier. Feel sicker and sicker. As everyone else stares and points and mutters: “Good grief, I’m glad I’m not her.”
There must be a better way, I thought, casting about for inspiration. So how about this for a heartening tale..?
Sunday Times’ Style Quiz:
The Hookup #4
Halfway through London Fashion Week, the Millennial and I fell out. Before this (hot as hell, confirmedly gay) roommate of mine moved in, I could sprawl about all day half-naked, eating mango chutney from the jar, obsessively writing and rewriting my own sentences. But it is such a sad little existence, he begs me to desist.
He’s also fed up with me on the matter of ZZ, the man I “refuse” to stop mentioning. I try to tell the boy that when a man finally arrives in your life and causes you to understand, once and for all, the meaning of Bonnie Tyler’s power ballads and the oeuvre of Bryan Adams, it might be impossible to forget. But the Millennial is much too young, and much too cool, for (Everything I Do) I Do It for You…
The Hookup #3
When you fall in love with another woman’s man, you curse fate and shake your fists and scream at the sky. If only you had met him first, you’d be living out At Last by Etta James. But you didn’t, so you’re trapped in a Sylvia Plath poem.
It was the strangest thing. It had never happened before. It has never happened since. The instant I fixed on his peculiar eyes I knew he was the greatest thing alive. I wanted to spend all my time just looking at him. I’ve known handsomer men. I’ve known cleverer men. But I was addicted to his jokes and his beautiful face.
Love is the drug. I was completely off my tits…
The Hookup #2
Nuptials are the single girl’s nemesis. Every time, I rock up determined not to make a fool of myself. And every time, I fail worse than the time before…
MY FIRST DATING COLUMN IN THE SUNDAY TIMES’ STYLE MAGAZINE!
When I was young I thought Bridget Jones was a joke. Ha-ha, what a load of codswallop, I laughed, as I watched her chain-smoke her way into Colin Firth’s britches. But then I reached her age and found, to my horror, it’s all true. Every scene is now being re-enacted by me, from the hopeless crush on the wrong man, through the never-ending quest for self-improvement, to all those bloody dinner parties.
