Texting, Texting, 1, 2, 3

In an age of online dating, where everyone’s laying (nearly) all their cards on the table, and you can while away happy hours window shopping for a mate via the Guardian, Match or whichever other virtual shopping mall you’re frequenting, I’m still no clearer on the etiquette of Being Asked Out.

Friends of mine who’re internet dating face a daunting array of winks, pokes, prods, the vaguest of emails saying, ‘Hi’ or, if unlucky, really basic propositioning. Which is pretty shit – if someone just winked at you in a bar, and then left it at that, you’d ignore them. Why do men online think this approach is going to net them a different result? I know it’s a numbers game, and god knows, numbers games are exhausting (especially for anyone as numerically challenged as I am – if given a £5 note and asked for change based on the fact the item cost £4.50, I can just about manage), but really, wouldn’t it be easier all round if you just put in some initial effort? Like, send an actual email – something along the lines of, ‘you seem nice/interesting/there, would you like to go for a drink?’ Because this is the other thing that my friends have said happens a lot – you email for a while, and they still don’t actually ask you out. Which is surely the point of all this – I doubt anyone’s going into it to get a virtual pen-friend. Emails are exchanged, to the point where eventually, someone says, ‘so, shall we meet up?’ Then it becomes a lengthy back and forth of saying, ‘yes, that would be nice’ and then seemingly it’s a huge effort to get them to actually say, ‘Thursday is good for me’. And then, of course, there’s the supplementary, ‘Where shall we go?’ discussion.

I keep telling one friend to just suggest a date and a venue, because a lot of men seem too shit to get it together on either front. Given the numbers game element, and the likelihood there will be little to no ‘spark’ (or one or other of you has lied about your weight, height, degree of hair loss or actual face in the photos, rendering even a second date pointless), I’d imagine it’s best to set up a date asap, just so that you can move onto the next one all the faster. If you’re on a dating website, the aim is clear: find someone to go out with. So why this endless hesitation and procrastination? It’s mystifying. You’re all there wanting to be asked out. So ask people out. Given that men seem to be so backward in coming forward, is it thus OK if us girls effectively do all the asking? If they’re not acting on their hunter/gatherer impulses and pursuing you, then does that mean generations of conditioning viz women not being ‘forward’ and sitting around like Jane Austen spinsters waiting to have their dance cards filled has also disappeared?

It’s a quandary for the modern laydee. We’re used to being pro-active in most spheres, even if we don’t necessarily get what we want all the time (I’m thinking in particular of pay rises, which are notoriously difficult to achieve, ironically, in the female-dominated arts and media business in which I ply my trade). But when it comes to being asked out, I’m still really, really old fashioned. I have read The Rules (I read it for work; I laughed at it; I couldn’t help still thinking that some elements of it were probably true). I’ve also read He’s Just Not That Into You, which is terrible, and how it became a book is anyone’s guess, when it’s a 5 minute section of dialogue in one episode of Sex and the City. (Don't get me onto the film, which I have inexplicably seen about three times now, and which is even worse.) But, I do think the premise that, if someone’s into you, then they’ll call/email/text you is sound. But how long does one wait to be called/emailed/texted, before you think, ‘sod it, I might as well call/email/text them’? And is it worse to beat yourself up for being spineless and waiting, or beat yourself up for being ‘a bit full on’ and getting in contact with them first?

Generally speaking, this isn’t a problem for me. I very rarely get chatted up, other than by cabbies, who, the minute they establish you’re single (the last one I had went through, ‘So, are you married? Kids? Boyfriend? Girlfriend?’ – the whole gamut) declare merrily, ‘Oh, but you get chatted up all the time, right?’ Umm, what alternative London do you live in? Just because you talk to people all day, doesn’t mean that anyone else does. If there’s one thing that London’s famed for, it’s the fact that no-one here talks to each other. But recently, there have been a couple of instances where I’ve had to decide whether or not to break my own (daft, old fashioned) rules.

So, first off, I have finally moved out of The House of Tiny Tearaways and back into my old spinster pad up the road. I was actually a bit sad about it, as I was, despite all assumptions to the contrary, really enjoying living with a bunch of people I didn’t know, several of whom were men. Men who were all modern, and did things like cooking and ironing. (Things that, by the way, I very rarely do; I became famed for my adherence to only cooking omelettes). They were chatty, they were nice, one of them was endearingly weird. It felt as though I almost had some friends who were blokes. (Well, I went out to a party and a club with three of them, once – that counts, right?)

A few months before I moved out, a new chap moved in. Every time there was a new chap moving in, all my single friends would be nudging me in the ribs and going, ‘Hey, what if your new house mate is HOT, eh? HAHAHAHAHA’. I would think, ‘Well, it’d seem even more like I was living in a Channel 4 sitcom. Or a chick fic book in which I fancied him desperately and he didn’t really know I existed, other than when we ran out of milk and I offered to go to the corner shop to get more.’ The New Chap looked about 22, so let us refer to him henceforth as The Youngster (he is actually 31). He was super smiley. We had Chats in the kitchen. It was all very nice. It came to the day I was moving out, and he came up to my room, to say goodbye, as he was going out for the day. I was, as per usual, being awkward (I hate goodbyes anyway, plus I was feeling in a bit of a fragile state – moving always makes me burst into floods of tears. I think it’s to do with things ending). The Youngster suddenly surprised me by saying that we must, ‘definitely, definitely, definitely stay in touch’. Really? THREE ‘definitelys’? I was so thrown that I idiotically replied that I ‘definitely, definitely, definitely’ would. We made noises about meeting up ‘for coffee’ when I got back from holiday in a few weeks’ time.

Ah, but who would initiate this coffee? And what did it mean, I pondered at length with my two friends, as we wandered around New York, undergoing the kind of heatwave in June that one would more normally expect in Athens in August (ie mentally as well as physically discombobulating). I decided I would send him a message via Facebook (this is as modern as I get; also, I didn’t have either his phone number or his email, either of which would’ve been preferable), as it was his birthday while I was away, and I knew they were having a house party. Much debate over the wording of a ‘breezy’ message. I’m sure men have no idea that you can spend an hour and a half composing a three-line message. (‘Do I start with ‘Hi’, or ‘Hey’ – which is more casual-sounding? Is that too casual?’, Do I put a kiss on it?’ etc).

We then messaged backwards and forwards for a bit. I was still mulling over the ‘definitelys’. Is that just how young people express themselves (over-emphatically), or was it possible he fancied me? I thought it seemed unlikely, given that most of the times we’d chatted, I was red faced and wild-haired, having just come back from the gym, and dressed in jeans and trainers. Eventually, I suggested meeting up for a drink, and spent three days debating whether or not it was a date, with anyone who’d listen. ‘No need to put a label on it,’ advised one friend, ‘it’s not a flipping Excel sheet’. Geezerboy at the gym, who I felt sure would see things in admirably black or white terms, (he’s a geezer, after all), asked me a lot of questions about what had happened when we were living together (‘Nothing! Just chatting in the kitchen, and he smiled a lot – then all these ‘definitelys!’) before professing himself mystified as to The Youngster’s intentions. It is weird, going out on a potential date with someone you’ve lived with for three months. What on earth does one wear, for a start? Especially when you don’t know if it’s actually a date or not.

We went out (to a bar I’d suggested - following my own advice). We drank a bottle of wine and had dinner. It was nice. We walked home together. He invited me in for a cup of tea, which I accepted, as I needed to pick up some post (I am, indeed, the Last Great Seductress, no?) We drank tea. I headed home about midnight, with both of us agreeing that we’d had a ‘really really [really] nice time’ and should do it again. So, it seemed like we’d been on a date (drink, dinner, um… tea?), but I was no further forward as to whether or not this was a ‘just good friends’ scenario.

On the next outing, I upped the ante. We went out on a Saturday (surely a date?) We went to a pop-up bar on the South Bank (totally the setting for a Richard Curtis film). We walked a long way trying to get into two different branches of Wahaca, before ending up in Polpo (grown up yet fashionable dining – plus more wine). We came back home and had another drink in a bar round the corner from both of our abodes. I invited him back to mine, based on a super-spurious excuse. We sat on opposite ends of the sofa, drinking more effing tea (I don’t even drink tea usually) until 1.40am, at which point he said he ought to go home. Friendly peck on the cheek, and off he went, into the night.

The next week, he offered to come round and cook me dinner. I mean, really, I’ve had someone cook me dinner about four times in my entire life. I got all paranoid as I was putting my flat on the market (whole other story) and had bought a white tablecloth to try to minimize my rather gigantic and ugly dining room table. So we ate our dinner with the plates resting on pieces of newspaper, in case of spillages. We then went to the cinema (could this be any more of a date?) We walked home afterwards. I ended up back at my old house. Can you guess what happened? Yes, we drank tea – sitting on opposite sofas. (I sat down first – the fact we weren’t even sitting on the same sofa was not my doing, so surely I can’t be blamed for ‘giving off the wrong signals’, viz-a-viz any romantic desires).

Subsequent to that, I didn’t really hear anything from him for a month (having previously received quite a few texts asking me how my day had been, etc) – he went away to a wedding in Italy, I had various things on. At which point I thought, ‘Dammit, I like hanging out with him – I don’t really care about this whole non-snogging thing. At this point, it’s going to take a team of sherpas with crampons to excavate us from the Friend Zone, so let’s be friends. I don’t have enough male friends to let one disappear’. So I texted and suggested a drink. We went out on a Tuesday and got pretty hammered (the bar we were in has terrible food, so I refused to order anything more than hummus and halloumi with pitta bread). By the end of it, he sounded a bit surprised about what a nice time he’d had (perhaps he had forgotten just how great I am, having not seen me for a month?!) It felt like there was A Moment. But because I’d suggested that we meet up in a bar which is literally two minutes from either of our houses, and because I also didn’t want to go the full Jane Austen and suggest he ‘walk me home’ (as I couldn’t face any more hot beverage action), there we were, right outside the bar, at the traffic lights where I cross the road and go right and he goes left. We both went our separate ways. If this carries on, I’ll at least be able to claim that I have a Platonic Boyfriend. Or perhaps that I am now a Semi-Spinster.

Anyway, after all this near-miss stuff, I then got ver’ ver’ drunk in a trashy bar in Clapham with some mates on Friday. It is a place we go to expressly to get drunk, dance to terrible 80s music and cop off with unsuitable men. I somehow managed to cop off with someone who seemed – whilst drunk and in a very dimly lit arena – to be quite tall, dark and handsome. He was also 31. Everyone is 31 – ‘Six Degrees of Separation Angus’? 31. The Youngster? 31. Thirty one is clearly the new 28 (which was the age of men I generally used to attract. Not that I’m complaining – it’s better than getting blokes who are 51). So, it came to pass that he suggested that we ‘exchange numbers’. Which is another really annoying modern thing – can’t men just say, ‘you seem nice – do you want to go out for a drink sometime?’ What is this ‘exchanging numbers’ thing – you might as well give someone your business card and suggest ‘meeting up at a networking event’.

So, then you’re twiddling your thumbs, hating waiting on a text in the same way that you waited by the phone when you were 16. (Well, you did if anyone was asking for your number at 16; personally, they absolutely weren’t. I had the social skills of the bag of potatoes that I so acutely resembled). ‘Do blokes still do the 3-day rule?’ I thought. ‘If so, why? All communication moves at a lightning speed these days, it’s stupid to leave it that long out of some sense of being cool’. But then, could I text him? Half of me thought, if he doesn’t text, then he doesn’t want to see you. The other half thought, oh, be proactive, what’ve you got to lose? Mainly, I wanted him to text me because I wasn’t entirely sure what his name was. Well, it’d been noisy and I was, as we’ve established, not altogether compos mentis.

By Tuesday, I decided to go for it, spent half an hour composing another ‘breezy’ text, (it’s exhausting, this necessity for breeziness), sent it, then spent the rest of the afternoon chiding myself for being a dick and wishing I hadn’t. However, he replied, and we are going out tonight. As he lives in Clapham and I live in Streatham, I suggested meeting up in Clapham, Balham or Brixton. He picked Brixton. I have still ended up suggesting the actual meeting point. Oh, and turns out, he’s one of those people who doesn’t sign his name at the end of texts, which could be somewhat awkward...

Does Kevin Bacon live in East Dulwich?

Is it finally Spring? I don’t want to get lulled into a false sense of security on the basis of one day when it didn’t rain and I felt bold enough to leave off all three layers of thermals when leaving the house. The Winter of Discontent has now lasted for so long that I have come to the conclusion that in order to try to sort out the nation’s dire financial problems, the Coalition have in fact sold us to the White Witch, and we are now living in Narnia.

As my friend Claire pointed out, this would make George Osborne the Edmund of the outfit, keen to barter everything he owns for the promise of some Turkish Delight and untold power, which pleased me greatly. Who will be our Aslan? Only time will tell. Perhaps we need an actual lion running both the economy and the weather.  Oh God, is that why Boris Johnson has that terrible hair? Is it a subconscious attempt at a mane?

Anyway, these hopeful attempts at a change of season are accompanied by new shoots in the House of Tiny Tearaways. Yes, it is all change on the home front, with a recent slew of departures and arrivals to rival Heathrow on a Bank Holiday.

Firstly, Beautiful Couple Canadian David and Kim have moved to the coast (Plymouth? Portsmouth? Somewhere like that). Kim had family down there, neither of them seemed to like living in London, and David finally managed to get an actual, permanent job, working for Canadian beer company Molson, after a succession of jobs that included being a builder, a charity mugger and packing dildos in an Ann Summers factory. (Is this the 21^st century equivalent of the ‘butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker’, one wonders).

They have been replaced by less beautiful (but even younger) couple Chris and Natalie, who both hail from Hull. Chris works on oil rigs off the coast of Aberdeen, so spends two weeks there and then two weeks in London. He gets flown to work (from Aberdeen) by helicopter, which beats most commutes. He also has an even longer trip down south than I did when I lived in Edinburgh, and that was bad enough. Natalie wants to be an actress, but is making ends meet by working in fancypants bakery chain Gail’s, which means that she regularly comes home loaded down with free baked goods which would otherwise end up in the bin at the end of her shift. I can confirm that the Gail’s hot cross buns are definitively the best in the world. Thank God it is only the Easter period for a short time, or I would now be the size of a killer whale.

Asha (fan of Holby City and making elaborate meals for her boyfriend, which they then insisted on eating in her room – weird) has made way for Mysterious Neil, who I have literally seen about eight times since he arrived. Despite a comment from Ben soon after he’d moved in that we were now living with ‘the 40 year-old virgin’, (he is, conversationally speaking, what could best be termed ‘a bit awkward’), Neil seems to have a social life that requires him to be out every night and all weekend. To the extent that I think he may be living a double life and is actually a spy. He has lived in Streatham for a very long time and has an exhaustive knowledge of every bar, pub and eatery within a two-mile range. We have yet to meet any of his friends. The only time I see him is when he is en route to bed, having come home at 11pm, and I am still in the sitting room watching shit telly.

Handsome-yet-dull Ben has also moved out, taking his Abercrombie and Fitch biceps and his protein shakes with him (and also freeing us of his annoying habit of draining food in the sink, then leaving most of the stuff that’s escaped over the side of the colander, because, what, it will eventually all break down and go down the plug?) He has yet to be replaced, so I live in hope of recruiting a man who is equally buff but who has developed a personality as well as his quads.

Terribly Tall Chris has moved to Brixton; his slot in the house has been taken by South African Will. I’ve never been a fan of South Africans, owing to the abrasively clipped accent. And the only one I was a fan of is currently suspected of shooting dead his girlfriend in the middle of the night. Which brought my habit of mentally singing, ‘happy and glorious, Oscar Pistorius’ to the tune of our national anthem every time he was mentioned, abruptly to a halt.

However, South African Will is the exception to the rule. I think he looks a bit like Aaron Eckhart, I’m getting used to the accent and he has very good manners. The other evening, for example, I came in and fixed some dinner. He was sitting on one of our two sofas. He spotted me coming to sit down and asked if I’d like to sit where he was sitting, ‘as this is your favourite chair’. (I’d never stated a preference, it’s just the one I usually sit on). How nice is that? I thanked him for being gentlemanly, but insisted he stay where he was.

He is also uber-sociable, which led to an excellent, random night out on Saturday. I’d been to see the early showing of the new Ryan Gosling/Bradley Cooper film, The Place Beyond the Pines, which is good, if overlong, and with a welter of clichés. But heck, RYAN GOSLING – even with bleached blonde hair and a collection of horrible tattoos – and robbing banks – you still would. He also sets back the no-smoking cause about 15 years by permanently having a fag on and looking gorgeous. My friend and I, after spending most of Friday afternoon gathering all the different Ryan Gosling Tumblrs, have decided that because he is so universally popular (and seems kind and generous – plus I think he saved someone’s life not that long ago – so is also HEROIC), he should be the world’s Timeshare Boyfriend, and every woman should get to go out with him for a night.

I digress. I got back about ten-ish to find South African Will, Weird David and Oil Rig Chris playing Wii Golf and hammered on a wide variety of ill-advised booze. Will, for example, had produced a litre bottle of some Austrian rum that was 60% proof and tasted like floor cleaner. David fixed me a mug of prosecco (we only possess one wine glass in the entire house), then Chris insisted that I drink a combination of Disaronno and Jack Daniels.

After about an hour, Will announced that an Irish ex-flatmate was having a house party in Tooting. All agreed we should definitely go. Ten minutes later we were piled into a cab (me having changed my trainers for boots and bunged on red lippie as a concession to Going Out). We arrive at the house party which, despite having been billed as an Irish rave up, is not very well populated. I get offered a Mojito by a very drunk Irish man, who alternates asking me my name and then telling me I look hot on a permanent loop for five minutes. 'This is fun, isn't it?' I think. Ten minutes in, the entire house is suggesting going to some bar in Putney, which will cost £15 each to get in, plus cab fare. Will, thank God, vetoes us going, so the four of us, plus a friend of Will's that we have picked up, called Angus, go round the corner to some barn of a bar, called the Tram Shed, filled with drunken young people.

There is a huge queue and it's deemed unlikely we'll get in. Will somehow manages to charm the door staff, who let us in for a £20 bung. There is a lot of rubbish 90s music, to which we all dance around like lunatics (the boys are, after all, shitfaced to a man, whilst I've only had a small glass of red, a glass of prosecco, a shot of Disaronno/JD and a very small amount of a mojito served by a drunk amnesiac leprechaun). Chris (newly back from the rigs, and without Natalie – she's away in Paris), is chatting up everyone. Girls, boys, probably if there was a dog there he'd be talking to them. He eventually falls foul of some bloke, nearly starts a fight and gets escorted outside by burly bouncers. Which, as he is the world's most mild mannered man, is a bit alarming. I decide that given Angus is the only man I don't currently live with, and seems nice, (and Chris has informed me that Angus fancies me – I'm more of the opinion that I'm the only girl in the party and Angus is just dancing next to me, so doesn't obviously fancy me), and that Chris, David and Will are clearly going to get themselves into some sort of drunken trouble, that Angus and I should leave. 

So, we end up in his (very nice) house-share in East Dulwich. I find out on returning on Sunday that Will and David had gone on to the Electric in Brixton and not got back till 6.00am (David having forgotten both going to the house party and the fact we were in a bar in Tooting – I do worry about him). They'd lost Chris, who finally made it back at 7am having had to pay £30 for a taxi from Brixton to our house (which is a 15-minute bus ride). He said he was so drunk he couldn't even see the bus numbers, ergo having to get the taxi. I was just pleased he was alive. He had, however, managed to get hit in the face when Will hoisted someone trying to nick his phone from his pocket. All in all, quite the night out.

But it doesn’t end there. I got in this morning, and obviously it is EXCITING that I have managed to score, and also with a younger man (31. Although, as has been noted previously in these parts, there is rarely anyone who is over 35 on a night out). I was regaling my two colleagues about my escapades and saying, 'yeah, it was this really tall guy called Angus'. At which Nicole, the PR Director, said, 'Oh, I knew a tall guy called Angus at uni. Good looking, kind of lanky, dark hair?' 

Me: 'Um, yes, but surely that's not him? He's 31'. 

Nicole: 'Yeah, I'm 31. Sort of intense, bit in his own world?'

Me: 'Well, we didn't really talk about a lot of culture, but he did have a number of Noam Chomsky books on his shelf.'

Nicole: 'What else do you know about him?'

Me: 'Er… well he's not Scottish at all – he grew up in Kent.'

Nicole: 'YES! He grew up in Kent too!'

Me: 'Right, this is weird.'

Both colleagues: 'FIND A PICTURE OF HIM.'

So I Facebook stalked him through Will, with whom I am not friends, but who is on our house FB group. God, I am so modern.

Me: 'Right, here he is.'

Nicole: 'THAT'S HIM!!!'

All: MASS SHRIEKING

Jesus. How small IS the fucking world these days?!

January: It's Like a Month of Mondays

Well, how's everyone doing in the still unwieldy-sounding 2013? I'm tackling my annual 'no booze in January' health drive, with mixed results. Generally, I find this a breeze until about the third weekend of the month, where I crack and have a glass of red, then get back onto the wagon, and January slips by with little to trouble me, other than being penniless.

This year, however, it feels as though January has lasted for three months already and I can't believe there's another week to go. Every evening finds me gasping for a glass and gnawing at my own fists with boredom and pent-up irritation. I think the snow hasn't helped, rendering me house-bound for most of the weekend, due to a combination of transport being nigh-on impossible (surely in the Great Freeze of the 17th Century, when even the Thames was solid, no-one encountered this many problems traversing London? I'm tempted to revert to a horse and carriage), and my only sensible footwear, a pair of walking boots purchased to deal with Edinburgh's Arctic conditions, being in storage.

This week, for example has been taken up with: 1/ Trying not to fall over on suburban iced pavements (I have a morbid fear of breaking a hip) 2/ Deciding I'm bored of wearing trainers (only footwear approaching 'condition appropriate'); risking heeled boots, as most streets are free of hip-breaking hazards 3/ Buying more Uniqlo heat-tec thermals (I'm now the proud owner of 3 long-sleeved t-shirts, a vest top, 2 pairs of thermal leggings and 2 pairs of thermal socks; I should have some kind of Advantage card with them. I'm resisting the temptation to wear them all at once) 4/ Trying to distract myself from lack of booze by going to the gym or eating loads of carbs (one of those options is healthier than the other) 5/ Trying to work out finances by scribbling sums on backs of envelopes. How do I have so little money, when I think I live the life of a particularly ascetic nun? I'm also trying to avoid scoffing an entire Graze box the minute it hits my desk and to work out whether I really need a pair of hand-knitted bed socks in the Hush sale (only a tenner!) or whether I'm just hankering after them because I'm grumpy and cold and I feel like I could pretend I'm in Little House on the Prairie, rather than a very cold bedroom in Streatham. 

I've also decided that I should replace sitting in pubs with Doing Culture, as then you can have a cup of tea afterwards instead. The start of the year has seen me race around The Pre-Raphaelite exhibition at the Tate (kind of a 'greatest hits' show, so very little I hadn't seen before, but some nice tapestries and stained glass at the end); a free Marilyn Monroe exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery (which was literally one room and not particularly inspiring) and I'm going to the V&A's Hollywood Costume on Sunday. 

I've also caught a plethora of films, including Life of Pi (beautiful and finally a film where watching it in 3D actively enhanced my enjoyment of it); Seven Psychopaths (Tarantino-lite, but fairly enjoyable); The Sessions (brilliant - and I had a very cathartic weep at the end) and I've got Zero Dark Thirty planned for Saturday evening, and Les Mis pencilled in for Sunday afternoon.

The only good thing about January, really, is the array of good films, all being released prior to the Oscars. It's the ideal winter activity, going to the cinema: warm, comfy seats, uses up a few hours and you can discuss it afterwards, over a coffee. Well, unless you've seen The Impossible, which I imagine requires a very stiff drink, given all the talk of people fainting in it, which is one of the reasons I'm avoiding it. I think Film Club will be the new Book Club for 2013.

I've decided to avoid New Year's Resolutions this year, (other than perhaps not going to see every exhibition in the last week it's on - meaning that the only ticket I could book for the Hollywood Costumes is at 8.45pm on a Sunday, when really I should be sitting down with a nice cup of cocoa, waiting for the BBC's Victorian police-'n'-prostitutes extravaganza Ripper Street to air.) It doesn't stop you from being bombarded with information about bloody diets, though. This year's favourites seem to be the Paleo Diet (eats, shoots and leaves? Or rather leaves, fruit, nuts, occasional meat - whatever most closely approximates a Mammoth, so, bison? or yak? - and probably some twigs. And lots of running around in fur loincloths. You are a sort of human/squirrel hybrid); the Alkaline Diet (cut out anything fun, squirt lemon juice over whatever you're then allowed to eat, probably find yourself constantly wondering whether okra is OK and dates are damnable, or whether it's the other way round. You are a kind of Diet Scientist, and should probably be encouraged to cook all your food over a bunsen burner); and the 5:2 Diet, aka Intermittent Fasting. I saw the Horizon documentary that this is based on last summer, and it seemed to make some actual scientific sense, and to have greater benefits than just losing a few pounds in a challenging/annoying way and then putting them all back on again once you'd re-introduced burgers, chips and wine into your diet. 

To wit - intermittent fasting helps to prevent cancer, reduce cholesterol levels and prevent Alzheimer's. Which I'm all in favour of, given how shot to shit my memory is. The idea is that you reduce your calories to 500 for 2 days a week, and then eat normally for the other 5. So, it's not technically 'fasting', it's just reducing your food to about a quarter of the recommended intake. Who decided, by the way, that all women, whether they be 5' with birdlike bones, or more Miranda-sized, should be eating 2,000 calories a day? It's always amazed me that we just take that as read - and equally that 'dieting' usually translates, in calorie terms, to about 1,200 a day. Doesn't it depend on how much you were eating in the first place? If you're generally stuffing down 4,000 calories (and you're not training for a  Gold in the next Olympics coxless four), then cutting down to 2,000 would be a diet.

Anyway, I digress. I've tried doing this, but not in any sort of rigid way. It's just relatively easy on a weekend if you have no plans (there are tumbleweeds blowing through my diary, as all my friends are skint, so are staying at home). You can get up and go to the gym, and then you eat something for lunch, and then something for dinner. With a lot of tea, coffee and water in between times. It's pretty easy, it just makes you a bit over-focussed on calories and you generally eat a lot of soup and boiled eggs. And you feel weirdly sprightly the next day. Or, you do if you don't wake up at 3.00am on a Monday, can't get back to sleep, spend the whole day in a spectacular snit and then go home and chuff down a load of pasta and pesto and a tiramisu. But I think that was an anomaly. The other upside is of course that it saves you quite a lot of money, so it gets my vote, especially in January. Lots of people seem to be doing it, and strangely enjoying it - I think they like the challenge of working out what they can eat - and also the relief of being able to eat 'normally' the next day. Often it's the daily grind of a diet that gets you down and makes you chuck them in. At least this way, if you know what 500 calories looks like, it also makes you more aware of what you're eating the rest of the time, which should help with general health in the longterm. 

Right, after all this talk of health, it's off to the gym where I shall be turned into a sweaty wreck by Geezerboy Mikey. At least the gym resolution is one that's stuck, for which I'm still clapping myself heartily on the back (though not volunteering for the Great North Run, as one of my friends is. Is she mad? Maybe she's just an uber-Paleo. I could dress up as a T Rex and chase her to help her along).