“I’m not some sad individual who can’t meet a man any other way,” I objected.
“Don’t be silly, Cathy,” she said. “It’s a perfectly practical 21st century way to meet people. Louise met a lovely guy didn’t she?”
“Louise is different.”
“This one sounds sweet.” Sara ignored me and jabbed her finger at the ad from someone who was ‘late thirties, tall, dark, attractive, solvent, emotionally-secure, sincere, likes animals, eating out, good movies and travel to warm places. GSOH.”
Everything else is optional but a Good Sense of Humour is practically obligatory.
My sense of humour is average. I laugh at Frasier and Friends, enjoy Absolutely Fabulous, smile at Sex and the City and find South Park utterly unfunny. I don’t like practical jokes. I had a horrible feeling that meeting a perfect stranger in the trendy riverside hotel was, somehow, a practical joke of monumental proportions. No matter what his SOH was like.
My heart raced as a man walked into the foyer. He was tall, very attractive and walked with a confident stride up to the desk. Unfortunately he was wearing a navy suit, dark tie and carried a briefcase. My guy would be wearing pale chinos and a blue jumper.
It was seven-fifteen.

Maybe he had arrived before me and found an even better place to hide than behind the cheese plant. He could’ve checked me out already and decided that someone who was size fourteen, mid-brown hair, grey-green eyes and was wearing (unusually for her) a lilac cotton dress didn’t look like the sort of woman who was ready for a possible LTR with an NS. It was Sara who told me that LTR was a long term relationship. I figured out the Non Smoking bit all by myself.
At half-past seven I went to the loo and re-did my lipstick. Then I hid behind my friendly plant again. There were more and more people coming into the hotel now and I observed them all covertly, wondering what their sense of humours were like and trying to decide whether or not any of them were suitable for a long term relationship with anyone. By a quarter to eight I decided that my own ‘likes cinemas and restaurants, cuddly, attractive’ description wasn’t good enough for a NS bloke with a GSOH who’d probably had better offers. It hadn’t worked with most of the men I knew already, why the hell should a complete stranger be taken in by me?
I made a hasty exit out of the side door of the hotel. I wondered if, by a cruel twist of fate, my NS with the GSOH was entering by the front door at the same time. That was the way my life worked, wasn’t it? Nothing ever went according to plan. My non-smoker could’ve been the perfect man for me and we might have had a happy, sincere, fun-filled life together (with his animals) together. But he was late and I’m passionate about time-keeping. I didn’t know the accepted abbreviation for Can’t Stand Unpunctuality.
I walked to Tara Street to catch the train home. I felt stupid and miserable. It’s bad enough being dumped by someone you know, but being dumped by someone you haven’t even met is even worse!
The train pulled into the station and a couple of teenagers, who’d been larking about a bit, knocked my bag from my hand. They also bumped into the man who was standing a few feet away from me. They looked embarrassed as they piled onto the train while I rescued my bits and pieces from the platform.

“This yours?” The man who’d been bumped handed me a lipstick.
“Oh, yes. Thanks.”
“Bloody kids,” he said. “Should look where they’re going.”
He sounded like Victor Meldrew even though he was only about thirty-five. My sense of humour stretched to One Foot in the Grave.
“It was an accident,” I said.
“Oh, I know,” said the man. “But I don’t see why everyone has to spend their time pushing and shoving each other these days. Even if it is supposed to be fun.”
I wanted to laugh. Exactly like Victor Meldrew, I thought.
“I mean, having a laugh is one thing, but they should think about what they’re doing.”
I bit my bottom lip.
“After all - ” He stopped suddenly and looked at me. “Are you laughing at me?”
I shook my head but I didn’t trust myself to speak.
“You are!” He stared at me. “You’re laughing at me.”
I shook my head again. “It’s just - ”
He grinned suddenly and then I realised that, thankfully, he didn’t look like Victor Meldrew.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve had a bad day. I’ve been working late, my career is in terminal decline and I’m supposed to find something funny to say about heartburn.”
“Heartburn?”
“Ad agency,” he said. “They want something different. A new approach.”
“Oh.”
“Heartburn isn’t funny,” he said. “Not remotely.”
“Don’t you have a Good Sense of Humour?” I asked.
“Pardon?” He looked at me in amazement.
He wasn’t the man I was supposed to meet. He was only average height, his hair was sandy and, if he had a good sense of humour it was clearly in abeyance. I liked him a lot.
“Would you like to go for a drink?” I asked, shocked at my own question. “You can bounce the ideas off me and I can tell you all about the funny side of indigestion.”
“There is a funny side?”
“Absolutely,” I said.
“You’re on.”
So me and the man with no sense of humour left the station and went for a drink. And we talked about lots of things. Funnily enough, though, heartburn wasn’t one of them.