I recently attended a government-related healthcare function where I was confronted with an award-winning company owner who boasted that he'd been abl...
Our High Street this week, I have to say, is a shame to us all. It's gone a trashy shade of red. The colour pollution of Valentine's paraphernalia started four weeks ago. Four! Barely had the dregs of the January sales rails been relegated further into bargain bins when Clinton's was transposed into a sea of red.
Enamoured by amour? Sick of schmaltz? Or just indifferent to 'involvement'? Whatever your take on V-Day and your Facebook relationship status, there are plenty of alternative options for you in the city of London.
With the cheese-fest that is Valentine's Day fast approaching, it's time to get your exit strategy in place. For whatever reason (you're recently heart-broken, perpetually single and cynical, or you just happen to have taste), here are the places where you're most likely to be left untroubled by lovebirds.
Almost everything sold in the supermarket is aimed at an audience of two or more. Your hand hovers over the English muffins, packed in sixes. You'll never eat six, not before they go stale. The only way you could get through six muffins before the mould hits is by having them for every meal for the next two days.
They say Christmas is about giving, about sharing and about being with the ones you love, which is a load of sentimental old tosh. It's about getting drunk, receiving underwear you wouldn't be caught dead in and tolerating behavior from people you normally wouldn't be seen dead with.
If there's one thing we can be pretty sure of, it's that she'll be dancing in her knickers and duetting with her rapper grandchildren when she's 88.
After having such a nice time with the Stuntman after the gallery, I decided to get all proactive on his ass, and ask him out. But for more than just a few drinks. A friend of mine owns a bijoux little cottage on the optimistically-named English Riviera and asked me if I wanted to housesit for a long weekend.
Hooray for online dating! Who needs romance when you can be ridiculously picky and specify what you want from another human being, even down to their ...
D Day I awoke to find a Facebook friend request from him. Now this was odd as he'd friended me many moons before and must have therefore UNfriended me at some point. As trivial and teenage angsty as that all sounds it really was the final straw. How much more could this man mess me about? ENOUGH.
If "being single can be amazing", could it start being amazing in its economic reward, so the girl on the platform could be me, on my way to the airport to escape on a holiday with no extra costs where I can sip my two for one cocktails - for one.
It takes two to tango, yes, but when you have two people, you have twice as much of everything. Twice as many moods, opinions, outbursts of anger, simpering uselessness, passive aggression, excessive control freakery.
It's 10 years since I experienced my first Christmas alone. I was apprehensive and judging by the unprecedented number of calls I received that day, so were other people. The reason I spent it on my own was due to a break-up and imminent move so it made sense. I had control over when, what and how I did everything. I loved it!
A completely rational and intelligent friend recently shocked me by bravely confessing that 'I don't actually feel like my life will really start until I get married and have babies'. I guess I am different in that noone ever put the batteries into my biological clock.
Saturday rolls around and I'm annoyingly aware it's the first weekend in ages that no plans have been made with the beau - I worry that he has tired of my affections, (incredible as this may seem) ...My best friend Zoe saves the day with a text.
