The Banks children give their grumpy father an advertisement for their ideal nanny in the film Mary Poppins. He then tears up the note and puts the pieces in the fireplace and they travel up the chimney to magically reach Mary Poppins who arrives to the Banks’ home a few days later. Never mind that I don’t have a chimney, I wish I could do the same and ta-da! a boyfriend would fall from the sky. A year ago, my advertisement might have resembled the one written by the Banks kids – “You must be kind, you must be witty…Never be cross or cruel…” but now with the desire becoming more acute, I’ll settle for – just love me unconditionally.

Of course experience has shown I need to get on with my match; that we ought to have a similar life outlook, agree on where to live and like each other’s clothes. But the bulk of the stuff of life such as dietary requirements, hobbies and relatives, we don’t have to share, although I’m open to having nice in-laws. If my new man likes to spend most of his spare time in the gym or hiking, go do with my blessing, and if he doesn’t rate my streaming habits – like how I always watch foreign films in their original tongue with subtitles – no problemo, I’ll be in the other room on the iPad.

I’ll be fine with a relationship that starts out as mostly a phone thing and then progresses to being IRL only on weekends. And in the beginning, I don’t want too much romance. My ideal lover can prove his attraction by being reliable and loyal, but he needs to be a little chilly so that I have a get-out-of-heartbreak card if the relationship is short-lived. Might sound odd but there’s a character in Dolly Alderton’s novel Good Material who’s inspired me to think like this.

I can’t say I want a boyfriend and not be bumbling around a dating site. Perhaps my chances are skinny because I’m only on one but the searching is like unpaid labour. The site needs more attention than my IG business account and I wouldn’t want two of those. This is how it works: Every few hours I get a notification and I might go in and there’s absolutely nothing new on my chat page. The notification is a reminder to swipe through the range of guys on offer. I check faces and read a few bio paragraphs. Most of these potentials have filled out the section about what they’re looking but I ignore that –  maybe ‘casual’ could be charmed into long term?

When I do type with someone, our chat tends to be either unexciting or we immediately get into a state-of-the-world convo which never leads me to getting lucky. Often my maybe mate wants to do voice notes, which is like two monologues existing side by side but never intertwining. And then there are the horny fellows who ask you how you like it after your virtual “Hi, What’s up?” At any moment I can be ghosted but I’ve become immunised against that, especially as it now occurs in the email world too.

I’ve had three dates with men met online. Date number one was annoyed that I wouldn’t let him go to my home after a lovely long walk and some bonding over deep talking. His visceral disappointment might have made me feel guilty for being a tease so with date number two I did a pre-nip in the bud. After a couple of compulsory-for-me-to-have phone calls, we arranged for a drink at a pub near my home and prior to our rendezvous I was repeatedly clear that however much we might like each other, I was going home alone. I guess he heard that as a do-able challenge. When, at our pub table, he finally accepted that love-making wasn’t yet on the menu, he said he was going to the toilet and disappeared like a puff. Two hours later I got a text, and when I wrote back about how I had to pay for our coffees – no biggie but worth mentioning – he replied by blaming me for this or that. And the third date was doomed from the start because all I could think about was how I’d forgotten to ask before meeting, how many decades ago his online photos were taken.

In my situ of not yet having a boyfriend, my life feels too unpeopled. I can put the radio on the moment when I wake but it’s not the same as hearing a human saying, “Morning honey!” and I’ve had enough of always making my own cuppa. I can, as Miley Cyrus sang, buy myself flowers, and I have good times with platonic friends, but come the night and stuffies can’t put an arm across me. Yeah, I know that when I do get a love relationship it’s likely to have to weather dark and difficult times; but truth is I sometimes worry that I have a sell-by date and that if this singledom goes on for too long, I won’t know how to get back on the tandem bike. So dearest readers with fireplaces, happy for you to print this new letter, tear it up and let the pieces sashay up your chimney.