I have always loved summer in London; the sun that sets over Hyde Park, the million city dwellers' after-work drinking sessions and the infamous partial sunshine beaming though the blanket of grey cloud cover. Just as the apparent attractiveness of the entire nation increases, breaking free from hibernation, all over London the previously cocooned descend on our city's streets suddenly damasked of their winter clothing exposing their untanned flesh. The bars in Berkeley Square become rife with single women quaffing iced chardonnay, joggers swap scarfs for revealing crop tops and coffees soon turn to suggestive condensation dripping Frappuccinos, the city becomes a playground for any straight red-blooded male.
I'm like a normal guy, mid-twenties, single and bisexual. On the odd occasion I'm lucky enough to wake up next to someone, and more often than not, it's female, although sadly it's generally a friend's unattractive country dwelling-cousin. Having referred to myself as 'perfectly lonely' for the past year, I had my yearly epiphany, where in my life I want to wake up next to someone I care about leaving behind dreadful nightclub tequila snogs for a fully active girlfriend, for one main reason...
I am again fully aware that in a few weeks the whole country will descend into annual state of bitterly cold, miserable, British winter. Not to be mixed up with a fabulous snowflake winter day you might have seen in a Richard Curtis film, I mean a blustery, north-westerly cold rain from the arctic spitting in your face through central London winter. During this time even the most cold hearted man would rather wake up naked next to his own sister than be alone on any Sunday night.
I was fully aware that if there was ever the perfect time to meet someone, this summer would be it.
So I began the journey buying myself my first bottle of Lynx, which if you believe the adverts make scantily dressed models fall to the feet of even the simplest man. I stop shaving; I grow a stubbly goatee, which seems to work terribly well for any dirty looking A-lister. I buy a Topman replica of terribly expensive shoes I saw Harry Styles wear in a recent edition of GQ and I invest in some hair wax, which promises to keep your hair up through even the toughest London terrains, even though smelling like an industrial solvent. So I take to summer as if winter had never come before.
I travelled down to Cornwall for a few weeks and gained a few vital warm up snogs and a caravan grope. I flew to the Greek islands where we (non metaphorically) smashed plates with the local gangster's daughter, ending up escaping the grasp of angry gangster uncle. We even had a stag party in Amsterdam where I got too drunk on a plum distilled spirit and missed my chance with a Latvian university student who lives in Fulham! Back in London we did the usual bars, snogs in clubs and went on a few dates. I even managed to end up in bed with a fairy beautiful waitress, who ended up having mild Tourette's.
However it was now leaning towards mid-September and at some hideously antisocial hour in the morning, I woke to the dog begging to be let out. As I stepped out for the first time in months a dreaded frost was covering the lawn only being dissolved by the dog's morning attribute. On seeing my own breath, I had discovered it was officially the first day of nearing winter.
This was the end, the idea of finding a perspective winter wife had gone, within weeks Pret a Manger would be selling a festive stuffing sandwich whilst the smell of cinnamon would invade our senses at any given opportunity and with the cold wind in the right direction you could hear the faint whisper of Harrods Christmas display on repeat into the evening air. It was at that moment I realised that I would now be single for the next six months. The elusive, attractive and available singletons of London had gone back into hibernation for another year.
Whist everywhere you look smug summer romances are settling down to their Sunday evenings in front of their roaring fires and planning Bonfire Night, I, on the other hand will be spending winter getting drunk on red wine, smoking hundreds of cigarettes, avoiding winter wonderland and watching repeats of Made in Chelsea wondering where it all when wrong.