My kind of woman wears a minidress and drinks pints

I checked my charity shop chic in the mirror. Shirt (British Heart Foundation, Middlesbrough), £3.99; jacket (Tatty Bon, Glasgow), £5.00; trousers (Save The Children, Kendal), 4.99. Shoes, model's own. I stylishly caught the train to Glasgow, to meet The Architect.

I texted her from my seat in The Horseshoe pub. "I don't have much of an idea what you look like Hazel, so we might be in for a slightly surreal chase round the pub." "I'm mainly in black and I've got a large bronze bag." A large bronze bag? Was I about to make an appearance in Scotland's most stylish city in the company of a woman who carries a chav-bag?

Her blonde hair was in a bob, and she was dressed in a black and grey wool minidress which distractingly stretched across her thighs when she sat down, a wide black belt, tan coloured tights and black boots to just below the knee. Her bag was a relief, muted and with nothing metallic about it. She was a pleasure to look at. All afternoon I was searching for a way to convey this to her, failing every time to find words with which I was happy.

The conversation inevitably started with architecture. Handily, I have recently read Lynsey Hanley's Estates: An Intimate History and I once went to an exhibition about the history of the architectural practice which built the Barbican, which she studied for her dissertation. "I'd love to live in the Barbican. You can rent one of the smaller flats for about three hundred pounds a week, which isn't too much." Isn't it?

As we got pleasantly lost trying to find the notable Alexander Thomson villa we were looking for, we started exchanging dating stories. "I think you can tell within five minutes if it's going to work romantically," she said, which made me feel a bit uneasy. Why would you say that unless it's understood that it isn't going to work romantically?

Walking back through the Merchant City she spotted a wine bar and suggested another drink. Just as I was wondering if it would be overdoing it to suggest we have a bottle, she ordered one. It turned out to be a dreadful Barbera with initial notes of jam and a long finish of Vimto. It was served by two self-conscious, incompetent twentysomething girls who made a pretentious palaver of giving the wine to Hazel to try first and who seemed to hang around the table for ages before finally taking their ridiculous painted faces away with them.

We chatted about the tyranny of having to declare your age on dating sites and how it makes sense for women to deduct a few years, given that many men are as prejudiced about wanting someone younger than themselves as many women are about wanting someone taller. I like older women, an impression reinforced recently having spent a year or so being fucked to the point of almost excruciating pleasure by someone ten years older than myself, although I spared her that detail.

It was getting a little chilly on the terrace so I suggested a final drink in the Blackfriars. Hazel was knowledgeable about whisky and spent some time in its rituals. At Glasgow Central, we found that she'd got the train times wrong and we'd have to wait another forty minutes; we went next door for another final drink. "I wish I'd met you earlier," she said, without the slightest romantic implication. Back in the station, we parted with her saying "Let's keep in touch. Send me drunken emails!"

She's inconsiderately landed a job in New York with a well-known architectural firm. She's clever. She's a good drinker. And she's fit.