It's 7.30pm, it's a Thursday evening and I am sitting scratching my name into a wooden table outside the Queen Elizabeth Hall while my date enters his twentieth minute talking about his job. Oh, this happens. The problem with asking people what they do for a living is that they tell you.

Punctuality is the politeness of kings, my grandmother always used to say, and while I'm not particularly regal, I do believe the least you can do on a date is get there on time. 'Fashionably late' is a flawed, dangerous concept. One man's height of style is another's fashion faux-pas. You mustn't leave anything to chance.

Going for dinner is a perfectly pleasant experience most of the time, but food on a first date is an absolute no-no for me, even if I'm feeling supremely confident about my table manners.

Commuting is a dull, necessary evil only a few of us can avoid. Usually, I work from home, the full journey from bed to office via bathroom taking around 90 seconds. But, on landing myself a new contract in a suburb of London, I am to rejoin the rat race I'd so fondly missed.