the frenchman

He looked like a younger Tom Conti. We’d met in an out-of-the-way bar in Battersea where I was out drinking with N (the woman who refuses to date). It was a place so innocuous, we’d found it by accident and, at the time, I was living on the same street.

N was delighted by his accent. But let's make no bones about it, what appealed to me most about The Frenchman was that he didn’t work in the media, he was some kind of restaurant guru. This made a change. You see, when you add that ambiguous catch-all of ‘works in media’ to your job title, two things happen: first, you have something in common with 50% of the London population.- even my postman is writing a book, which explains why he is far too busy to drop off parcels but not too busy to write out one of those While You Were Out (I Couldn't Be Bothered To Carry Your Parcel) notices. I guess it's that bit closer to his real vocation.

And secondly, anyone who works in the media will spend most of the date trying to figure out how many degrees of separation lay between your respective worlds. Answer: never more than two (and Facebook is an Orwellian nightmare).

Soo, getting back to The Frenchman, he wasn’t really my type. (Tom Conti isn't my type.) And he had nasal hair. Which I felt bad about noticing. But it’s amazing what a second bottle of wine and some sideline cheering can do (from a woman who doesn't date) and so one thing led to another: yep, I boozily agreed to meet him again. Drunk in charge of a diary. There should be a law against it.

On the second date, I quickly learned that The Frenchman was entirely preoccupied with his own mortality. His thick accent and my complete inability to speak French properly (for shame) made it difficult to quite grasp the full range of his reasoning but, with a few prompts and the power of mime, I did catch the odd expression such as “need to settle down’ and ‘have kids soon’. Hmm. Alarm bells were ringing. Struggling, to lighten the mood, I asked why he hadn’t settled down yet.

Mouth turned down, shoulders raised theatrically he replied, “I am a restauranteur and have travelled all over the world. I have dated some of the most beautiful women in the world." Fair enough, I thought. He continued, "Till now, given the choice between dating the most beautiful woman in the world and dating someone who is funny and clever....someone like you.” He nods in my direction to underline his point, " I would have chosen a beautiful woman - but now I am older..." The rest of his sentence hangs in the air, lifeless.

I stop feeling bad about him looking like Tom Conti and having nasal hair and get myself the hell out.