Last night I had a date; a proper one. The kind where you talk and laugh all night – where everything is just easy and light hearted; the kind where you walk away at the end of the evening feeling like a giggling twelve year old who’d just experienced her very first kiss.

Truth be told, I wasn’t much looking forward to this particular date (and believe me, I’d been on a fair few these past couple of weeks). For a start I was ill. My nose was blocked. My eyes leaked more than a Thames Water pipe and my voice had more rasps than a berry.

I felt about as attractive as an old bra. Oh wait no, that’s just what I had on underneath.

My expectations were obviously low.

But I didn’t want to cancel, I couldn’t. Because then they’d think I wasn’t interested. Which I wasn’t really, but then they’d know. THEY’D KNOW.

So off I went, strutting and sniffling my way to Richmond. I was late. Of course I was late. It wasn’t an intentional – I’m so bloody cool, sort of late. It was an, I can’t be arsed sort of late mixed with a complete lack of general awareness – of propriety.

I arrived just as my date was going out for a cigarette. I looked at him, he looked at me and all I could say was: You. Yeah. You. You. You. You. It’s you.

That my friend, is why I’m a writer and not a public speaker; I can delete crappy introductions on paper. It’s not so easy in real life.

Still, off we went to the bar. I chose a complete girl drink: a gin and tonic, even though the potential to burp threatened to mock me from its carbonated bubbles, it didn’t seem to bother me like it did last time with the Corona. With drinks in hand, we departed the rambunctious bar area for quieter pastures. The beer garden.

You know. That place where people smoke.

My throat was already out of sorts thanks to the myriad of maladies I pick up from work, so I could smell trouble was ahead. Or maybe that was just the smoke? We sat with an uncomfortable silence for about two seconds, before I look a slug of drink and then went for it.

I talked. And talked, and when I thought I couldn’t talk anymore, I did it again. I spoke about work, about travelling, even about bags for Christ’s sake. Not even designer bags (as if that’s any better) but the bags we sell at work for a penny. We talked about food, about friends and the joys of house sharing. Of which there are lots.

And then I talked too much. My throat hurt, and I started to choke. My eyes were watering. I kept coughing in that maniacal, hacking sort of way. And my date, bless him, look scared.

No, no, I’m fine, I kept repeating. All the while my mascara was running rivulets down my cheeks. Well, better the mascara than the date.

Because at some point between talking non-stop and coughing furiously, I realised I was having a good time. Perhaps it was the fact I wasn’t expecting to enjoy myself that did it. Perhaps it was the gin.

By the end of the evening, when my date very graciously offered to drive me home rather than allowing me to get on a bus, I accepted. Of course I did. There was no way I was walking home in this state. And by this state I mean delirious on Beechams Pro Plus, not alcohol.

There was a millisecond moment of hesitation as I said goodbye in the car and thanked him for the lift, before we sort of launched ourselves at each other with a carefree abandonment that I hadn’t know since I was twelve. And we kissed – snoggged – that typically horrible English word, right in his car.

And then like most adolescents copping off under the cover of darkness, he felt my breast, or rather my bra.

My extremely greyed, well worn, pathetic excuse of a bra.

Well, it could have been worse.

I could have burped in his mouth.