Sons and lovers

I was rather glumly looking back at my dating site stats for 2016. I've contacted thirty-seven women this year. Seven replied, all politely declining me. Two women contacted me, one with a dribble of inconsequential messages, and the other to give me a fortnight that was so thrilling that it felt my life was being renewed. It was sex-drenched from the outset, the first time since Seriouscrush in 2007 when I have felt the joyous liberation of being fancied; and bewildering in its sudden end, everything ripped up in one short phone call. Another unfortunate thing to come out of it was that I started dancing around my bedroom to Ce Ce Peniston's Finally, proving that being in lust ruins one's musical taste.

I still can't bear to delete her texts. No-one's ever spoken to me the way Trish did.

My venal motive for remaining on the site, of being able to silence the constant whine of my desire for Wendy, is hardly the right position from which to attempt a relationship. M / 52 / Lancaster, WLTM someone to help him get over a one-sided attraction. But I don't know what else to do.

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The first of the girls' conditional offers for university are filtering through. My eldest has received ones from Nottingham for Modern European Studies, and Bristol for French and Politics. Middle one has acting auditions at LAMDA and the Royal Scottish Conservatoire; not sure about the youngest ("Dad, what is it about light that makes it light?") She enjoys her job in a record shop, where her duties include entertaining a little dog which scampers around the shelves all day, and where the owner lets her choose the music. She's applied for Popular Music at Liverpool, but her heart's not in it.

It's going to be a stomach-quivering day in October when we wave them off. I don't want my boos to be eighteen. I want to put them inside quilt covers and swing them around and throw them onto the settee in hazardous games. I'll be silently worried about them all day, every day, imagining all the little hurts and exclusions and slights and failures.

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I've been in a village just over the border in North Yorkshire this afternoon, mystery shopping to see if the Post Office knew how to change a vehicle tax class. Never having driven in my life I was winging it a bit with answering their questions.

All I know about cars is that Olly's can go very fast, looks really stylish and is the kind of car you drive a new girlfriend up to a posh restaurant and appreciatively watch her short skirt riding up a bit as she gets into the passenger seat. However, as that is a sexist and vulgar thought of manly crudeness, I am glad it has never occurred to me.

Due to health and safety reasons, I had to call in on my way home for six pints, where I met my friend who's become a lot nicer a person after he had a heart attack and stopped being so fucking self-obsessed and talking about Northern fucking Soul all the time.

In walks this gorgeous woman. Early/mid 40s, with dyed dark blonde-going-on-red hair cut in one of those lovely sloping bobs, this fantastic bouclé purple top, (probably acrylic but made to look like wool) a black skirt ending just above the knee, black tights and black flatties.

My friend was being quite interesting for a change, but I had to go and talk to her. I mentally rehearsed what I'd say.

I went over to her -- and to my alarm she was sat with some ragged-haired younger bloke I hadn't noticed. "Hi -- sorry to interrupt -- but can I just say, with your combination of your haircut and top and that skirt" -- I am trembling at this point at having over-stepped the drunken mark -- , "you look absolutely gorgeous."

"What about me?" says the bloke, laughing. "Oh no, you're gorgeous too. You're meant for each other."

"I'm her son," he said.

"Well, thank you anyway," she said.

Well-intentioned, but I think that's classified as a fail.