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First date in 20 years

We'll start at the very beginning.  It's a very good place to start

First Tinder date ever.  Alone in a new flat in London after a couple of decades spent falling in and then out of love, with breeding in between.  Ex and I are polite and practical. Kids are fab and undamaged by the split, spend lots of time with me, and neither have any further place in this blog, other than possible future inadvertent cock-blocking.  Time will tell.

Alice.  She's my first ever Tinder match.  The massive whoosh of validation.  She's a nurse.  Voice like car wheels on a gravel road in the phone chats we have over the days leading to the date.  Kooky and intense. Petite, bobbed, greets me with a warm hug; chats, drinks and eats with me in the gilded delights of West Hampstead; comes back to my starkly empty flat, spends the night in a variety of warm and friendly gymnastic poses, kisses me goodbye, ghosts me within a week.

Is this the real life?  Is this just fantasy?  Caught in a landslide...

The reality from which there was no escape involved buying non-latex condoms - who knew that contraception after-effects could make your tadger itch like you'd been dipping it in a jar of condiments for the indolent?  It had been a while...





Was it always going to be as exciting but fundamentally empty as this? Is this how the new world worked?  And was there something horribly wrong downstairs?  These were truly unprecedented times.  Perhaps I should talk to my chums...?

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