OK, so I'd left the bar, The Copper wasn't with me (I'd shrugged him off thinking that despite the desire, he'd think me too easy were I to capitulate there and then....) and a smile was stretched wide across my face. I went home, thought intensely and euphemistically as an aid to sleep and woke up the next day to a text.

'Hullo gorgeous!' he put, 'fancy coming round to my pad?'

Oh God. The Pad. But I brushed that from my mind, got the directions and clambered - brushed, perfumed and nervous - into my car. Half an hour later and I still hadn't arrived. My phone bleeped:

'Hullo gorgeous! Are you lost? Look out for the ribbons!'

The what?

Slowing down the country road, I suddenly saw a rather curious bundle of ribbons tied to a gatepost. Nervously, I steered my car in, not knowing what to expect. A cult? The UK equivalent of Leatherface wheeling towards me? Or maybe a 6'6 man in jodhpurs, kinky boots and once more, that crocodile smile. If I'd have had a Sat Nav, it would've started bleeping at me furiously to reverse, but smitten by his buttocks (I have weaknesses....), I parked my car and got out, trying to emulate the girl in the perfume ad whose graceless beauty knows no bounds. Not even a Rover 200 and a shedload of mud.

'Hullo,' he purred, and the scene seemed set for perfection, until an Alsation bounded up to me from nowhere and began to hump my leg. The dog was named 'Kaiser,' and I can only but apologise to you, reading this, for thinking, 'How many more glaring pointers did she need?'
But I was young, smitten and easily persuaded. If I'd been a pensioner, I'd have probably given some tosser in a van 60K to tarmac my drive