Set fair.

Well I have been dating Phd Boy for 3 weeks now and have been on 6 or so dates in that time and so far all is going rather well. He is a very nice boy and we really do have a good time together. He is intelligent and interested in things, has a good social life and is definitely attractive. Clearly likes me a lot and is eager to see me and is interested in going to museums as well as going out to bars. Then comes the big but...

Why on earth is there a but one might ask, when he sounds utterly lovely?

But there sadly is one. I am not entirely sure what it is but it certainly has something to do with the following: my over-thinking everything, our not yet having slept together, his being so keen on me that I can get him to agree with me on pretty much every subject, his exceptionally hairy back, my constantly comparing him in my head to my ex Germanicus and the fact he doesn't read fiction.

To be fair most of these are fixable by me: I must just relax and stop over-thinking the whole thing, we will soon sleep together I am sure so I should stop obsessing as to when that will happen and comparing him to my ex is not entirely a bad thing but I should try and stop doing it so often.

Of the other three: I would dearly love him to get his back waxed... but I do realise I really can't ask him to do that yet, I will just hope that I can tempt him with the idea in the not too distant future. It really is terribly hairy though and I must admit I do find it very off putting... But he offered (and was immediately accepted I might add) to shave his beard off after only two dates when I mentioned something about preferring the clean shaven look so he might well be prepared to do this at some point. His ready agreement and willingness to fit in with whatever I want is actually in many ways a good thing, though long-term I see it could be jolly annoying. But right now it means that we see the films I want to watch, go to the places I like and generally do lots of me type things. In telling my mother about some of our dates she noticed this immediately and accused me of forcing my tastes on him, but truly I suggest and he always just agrees. It also amuses me to bring up particular opinions to test whether he will very quickly change his own and agree with me though which I must be careful about. I recently championed fox-hunting just to gauge his reaction and although he started off not agreeing with me he very soon changed sides! I would actually love it if he could come up with opinions, likes and places to go that are different from mine, however, as I believe that one of the lovely things about new relationships or even friendships is being exposed to new experiences. Currently it is only he who is having his horizons expanded.

As for the last big but: his failure to read fiction. Well he started to read fiction what sounded like as soon as our first date had finished! I had of course mentioned authors and books and he seemed to go straight to Waterstones. I must admit to being rather pleased about this, and at the very least I have encouraged someone to read more.

Since our first date I have actually given up the world of internet dating... I really do like him and don't like to date more than one person at the same time. I must admit I have also lied to absolutely everyone about how I met Phd Boy, I tell everyone we met in a coffee shop... Also got him to agree to stick to the party line over this! Very silly to mind but I while I am prepared to internet date I greatly prefer for people not to know.

So he is a lovely boy who I like to spend time with and who really doesn't have any actual flaws... perhaps it is simply that I don't feel a spark? Whatever the flaws of the ex, and he had many indeed, I was nuts about him right from the beginning. But maybe sparks can develop as people spend time together? I really do like him and if I can just stop myself from thinking the whole thing to death I think we could have a very nice time together indeed.

Date No.1.

The date with Phd boy last night went incredibly well! He was jolly handsome, much better looking than his pictures online, and rather nicely dressed. It amy sound silly to be so pleased that he dressed well but my ex was a dreadful dresser who was incapable of dressing for different situations but would wear the same brightly coloured chinos for a casual lunch and also for a formal opera or party... where as lovely phd boy looked smashing and just right for the occasion in his preppy but casual jeans and pale blue shirt. He really is good looking, yummy tanned skin with dark short hair and a lean but strong looking body.

We met for drinks and although I had arranged to meet my flatmate for dinner afterwards I ended up calling her from the loo and buying an extra hour to spend with him. We had lots to talk about, there were no horrid awkward pauses and he is jolly interesting. He can be a little long winded in some of his explanations but it is entirely possible that he was nervous and that caused this.

I was a little nervous before seeing him but he was waiting outside the wine bar for me which I thought very nice indeed, and was instantly recognisable from his photos. I had such a good time that I have been talking about him to various friends since! My flatmate of course heard all about him last night then my friends at work this afternoon. While I was having lunch with a friend we were discussing whither or not I should text him or if I should wait for him to do so, I was starting to wonder and wait for him to be in touch. Mostly because I am going away for a a few days on Saturday and rather wanted to see him tomorrow night before leaving.

I had no sooner finished lunch when he got in touch. Such a sweet message and we are now meeting up tomorrow night for date 2! Thrilled! Is it possible to meet the right boy on attempt number one?

The rocky road to love.

I have now been officially single for one whole year. After celebrating with lots of yummy faux champagne (I am but a poor student and unable to afford the good stuff) I thought back over the last year. I realised that I have successfully become a singleton like Bridget Jones and am now very content to spend time by myself reading books and eating chocolate with a trusty glass of red wine by by side, I am even perfectly happy to go to the theatre and on trips by myself when no friends are available. This is all excellent stuff but I would now definitely like to start dating again.

In the last year I have only been on a handful of dates, something had to change and I realised that I could make resolution after resolution about being ready to date again and about seeking dates, but really that nothing whatsoever was happening. In the end I decided to dip my toe into the murky waters of internet dating.

Although feeling much too young and normal to consider such an alarming idea and being horrified about the thought of having to put a picture of myself on my profile last weekend I just went for it. So far in a mere matter of days I have had more interest than in the whole of the past year and tonight I have my first date through the medium of internet dating. Strangely enough I am not the least bit nervous... perhaps because I am so aware that if it doesn't go well then there seem to be lots of other men on the website all eager to take me out for drinks and so really I can just relax and be myself. It also probably helps that he doesn't know my real name, it just makes me feel more in control of the situation.

I am meeting him for drinks this evening and have organised to meet my flatmate a couple of hours later for dinner so that if it is dreadful I can leave easily and have someone to talk it over with (though needless to say I have not admitted to her or anyone else how I met the man in the first place) and if it goes well I can always see him again.

He sounds rather nice: he is doing a phd and seems to appreciate literature. Sounds perfectly nice in his messages and looks pretty good in his photographs.

The online dating thing is actually rather good fun and it takes up a surprising amount of one's time. You need to send a great many messages back and forth to lots of men until you work out which ones you favour, some start off well on their profile but then descend into dullness or you find out they didn't go to university (my major turn off).

So date number one... I do wonder what it will be like...

All By Myself.

I think I have found the reason that I am still single all these months after my split: I really enjoy my own company! I sometimes cancel nights out with friends simply to have a nice glass of wine and relax with a book or a movie on my own, I need at least a few hours of reading and/or cult tv or movie watching time or at the very least internet browsing time on my own every day and I much prefer taking holidays abroad by myself than with friends. Although I so love proper evenings of chat with good friends and going out drinking and clubbing with uni friends, what I enjoy most of all is a yummy meal, some really good wine and a splendid new book (by new I must clarify that I really mean old but as in new to me).

But having come to this conclusion I am trying to make myself go out more, for after all while one afternoon I may simply think I am going out to meet a friend and have a cup of coffee while on my way there I may well meet a wonderful man, and so I have vowed to accept every single social offer from now until the end of the summer. Hence my acceptance to lunch with a new work colleague on Monday even though he is at least 65 and likes to flirt for he may well have a cute grandson or the waiter might be hot... and also it is a free lunch!

Because the thing is that one can live one's life perfectly happily and continue hoping one will meet someone wonderful to date and yet never meet them because one only leaves the house to work, study, meet friends etc but each time only with a set purpose rather than with a more open minded looking about one for possibilities, and I need to try and do that.

Adrian Mole and Pandora.

Oh dear fate really can be rather cruel... I have been bemoaning my lack of male attention but then when one does suddenly get some it is always from entirely the wrong sources. My oldest male friend asked to plight my troth to his last week leaving my feeling unjustifiably betrayed and outraged. We have been friends for a very long time and although we indulge sometimes (him a lot more than me) in harmless flirting we have been such sound friends that there seemed to be no danger of such a ghastly development. I like my male friends to be safe and our relationships free from any sort of tension created by unrequited feelings of that nature. Yes flirting with them is lovely and I do enjoy them acting all protective and so on with me when I am fragile, but I never want or expect them to have deeper feelings than those of pure friendship.

Alas not the case with this friend, however. He did ask me out a few times way back in our long forgotten school days but I was as unattracted to him then as I am now (a lovely chap but physically not at all my type). We moved on and grew up and stayed in intermittent touch thanks to the joys of msn chat and now facebook. We only quite recently reconnected and it has been lovely and great fun to have him back in my life. He is very clever and we have terrific discussions about things, and because we are friends of such longstanding we trust each other and confide all sorts of things about relationships, friends and our love lives. He has always reminded me greatly of Adrian Mole due to the sort of way they live their lives, outlook and to my mind they look very similar also.

But if he is Adrian then that makes me Pandora. And he really should have worked out that they never get together. They are very good friends but she flits in and out of his life, their relationship is mainly based on a shared adolesence and that while sadly he, like Adrian, seems to continue the early feelings of love for Pandora, she never returns them and really lives in quite a different world to Adrian.

It all made me very sad and the email in which he asked me out was truly lovely. He said he knew he didn't have much to offer me but his small all was mine for the asking. I let him down as gently and quickly as I could the next time we spoke but he has clearly been avoiding me ever since.  I really wish all male friends were simply safe and that one could be quite happy knowing they would never suddenly ask one out. I suspect problems of that nature with another of my male friends from whom I also want only friendship. He has been distinctly odd with me ever since i became single last summer and when he gets drunk I try and avoid being alone with him in case he says or does something for which I would have to rebuff him.

Oh fate you are a cruel mistress. I long to be asked out only to have totally unsuitable men do the asking!

From Richard Yates to Lionel Shriver.

I firmly and without a shadow of a doubt believe Richard Yates to be one of the most skilled authors I have ever read. His novels paint pictures in your mind so finely tuned that afterwards the plots and characters feel more like memories you have lived through than mere words on a page. He wrote with a precision all too rarely seen and with not one superfluous word in hundreds of pages of text. He evoked such raw and tender feelings within one and seemed to understand his characters so perfectly and absolutely, with no holds barred. No character was perfect, and all were endowed the most human of flaws. It was not until I read the novels of Lionel Shriver that I felt Richard Yates' legacy had been continued.

Lionel Shriver's work, since the day I first turned the pages of her greatest novel 'We Need to Talk About Kevin' has strongly reminded me of Yates. To my mind she is the female, modern equivolent of the ultimate writers' writer. So it was with a rather smug feeling, as though I had proved my great insight into matters literary, that I heard her on the radio a few days ago naming Yates' 'Revolutionary Road' as her favourite book. 

When I said Shriver carried on the style of Yates I mean it only in the very purest sense. Their characters and plots are nothing alike, nor the settings or the ideas. However, the same tone emanates through the books of both and the same precision over the choice and placement of words. They are both pitch perfect with their characters and unflinching in depicting them in all their unflattering truth. One would never dream of living in a book by either in the same way that one might fantasise about living in the pages of 'Pride and Prejudice'.

'We Need to Talk About Kevin' is a magnum opus of a book, a complete and utter masterpiece. Shriver had written several books and been a writer for decades before it was published but it proved to be her breakthrough. If I were to tell the uninitiated that it is about a teenage boy who massacres several of his classmates then I make it sound like a trashy novel, but nothing could be further from the truth. The book is not the least bit sensational and is rather a character piece about the mother of the boy, her life and her relationship with her son. A wonderfully full and masterful book which succeeds in painting the picture of a woman, not merely a mother, a complicated individual and one who without intentional bias and with stark truths addresses her life.

Sadly Shriver's 'The Post-Birthday World' fails to work. The characterisations are all still there, though less effective than in her other books, and the tone remains beautifully pitched. However, the disgustingly clunky framework (two divergent lives using the same character are given chapters in turn which means the same events are gone over twice just in different ways) totally spoils it and really is unforgivable. You expect that sort of thing from less skilled authors and find it in popular crowd pleasers like the gruesomely boring but very popular 'One Day' by David Nicholls but not from writers of Shriver's capabilities.

But my favourite of her novels has to be the wonderful 'Double Fault'. It depicts the relationship of a tennis professional with her partner and with the game itself. That is the book that makes me most strongly, and flatteringly, liken Shriver's style to that of Yates for just like him she perfectly paints the picture of her protagonist as a fully rounded and often rather unlikeable figure and is able to define and show her feelings with what feels like true and steady accuracy. With both authors one never feels that they have shirked away from mentioning the more real and unpleasant aspects of their characters and so one is left not necessarily liking the characters but certainly believing in them as true depictions.

After 'When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit'.

As a child I adored books about children in the World War II. I loved reading about children evacuees and those escaping from the Nazis. The very best were by Joan Lingard and Michelle Magorian, the former telling the tale of a family from Lativia, in a series of books, who ended up in America and the latter in 'Goodnight Mister Tom' and 'Back Home' writing of different child evacuees both before and after the war. But perhaps the very best book of all was 'When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit' by Judith Kerr.

Kerr's book was magically evocative to me as a child and was so pitch perfect for me as a little ten year old who was both fascinated by the history of the war and intrigued by the lives of children other than myself. It told of Anna whose father was a prolific anti-Nazi writer in Germany before the war and who was blacklisted by the Nazis. The family managed to escape, leaving her pink rabbit behind en-route, and their attempts to create a life for themselves elsewhere. When I was about 15 or so I suddenly discovered that Anna's story was continued over another two books and eagerly rushed to buy them only to be horribly and crushingly disappointed. The second book depicts a young adult Anna who is in her late teens and sadly she has totally lost her sparkle just as the author has lost her flair. The book is deeply depressing in tone and although I can now (I am re-reading the second two out of nostalgia and also to give them a fairer read than previously) see that Kerr was attempting to write of Anna in a different style and one more befitting a young adult audience I still think she failed. The book is set during WWII, however, it could still have had cheerful overtones, or indeed have depicted young love in a more convincing and enjoyable way. I don't think it works as a book for young adults quite apart from the heroine losing all her panache.

The third book is the very worst of the lot. Horribly dull and depressing I am skimming through it quickly. Poor Anna... she was so very vibrant and fun and cheerfully delightful in the first book which is of course what made it so special. Hitler and the war crush all the fun and life out of her. Had the second book truly been written for young adults and the third for adults (it really doesn't work for young adults given its sombre tone) the trilogy would have been jolly interesting for I have never come across a series that did that. But the first is brilliant and the second two almost crush the memories one has of it for one grows up to find out that Anna has rather a ghastly life in the end, and that that wonderful joyeous girl grows up rather boring and dull. I really wish she had stopped after writing the first book.

Ultimately we don't want our heroine children to grow up, get married and become boring. Rather we want to remember them as the wonderful and interesting children they were, and also most importantly to believe that when they do grow up they will do amazing things with their lives. It reminds me so much of 'Anne of Green Gables' by L.M. Montgomery. She started off as a young girl and although the books continued and took her into adulthood they still worked, until the fateful day on which she got married. For poor old Anne didn't continue to delight all around her and enrich the lives of many by continuing to be a schoolteacher, oh no she stopped working as soon as she got that ring on her finger and then went on to have about six children. She got old and worn down and dull, a far cry from the intelligently precocious firey red-headed young girl whose future was filled with endless possibilities.

I suppose I related to both Anne and Anna as a child and so anticipated relating to their futures also, only to be sadly disappointed in the banality of their grown up lives. Child heroes should never grow up, but should remain like the little Fossil sisters in 'Ballet Shoes' with strong hints about incredible futures yet to come.