2001-10-19 - 4:56 p.m.

�Last night I dreamt�that somebody loved me�no hope, no harm, just another false alarm��

So, after realising I�ve now had two and a half years of being single, I�ve been very conscious that I spend my entire time with couples. You should see it. They�re EVERYWHERE. I tell you. Men and women, men and men, women and women, members of the clergy and small farm animals. Couplehood is rampant, and apparently things are only going to get worse as imminent global meltdown is pushing up engagement and marriage rates and people professing undying love to anyone within grabbing distance on the tube. Except that furtive guy shuffling along with the white powder trailing from his bag.

So I�ve decided that I need to find some Armageddon-fuelled relationship junkie that has scraped the bottom of the barrel and is ready to go further. My trouble is that I�m cursed with an ability to flirt on a par with, say, mutant bacterial spores replicating in a Petri dish. Actually, I�m fairly awful at spontaneous speech full stop�relevance and coherence are relative strangers to my verbal repertoire meaning I mainly concentrate on just saying really dumb stuff. Last night, for instance, in a predominantly non-flirting scenario, I heard myself come out with the needlessly pretentious �I think the band Le Tigre are empowering� and instantly knew it was time to take my brilliant musical analyses elsewhere. Honestly, I astonish myself sometimes.

Anyway, ill-equipped and ill-advised at it may be, I�m now officially �out there�, wherever that is. I�m not sure on the immediate implications for my lifestyle, but we�ll see what happens. We�ll just ignore, for now, that my motives are to fit in with my peers, not be alone when the bombs drop, and increase the chances of hot monkey rumpo.

�Last night I felt real arms around me�no hope, no harm, just another false alarm�

According to the �Victim Mentality Monthly� magazines that the females of the house seem to spend hours reading, the way forward for flirting is text messaging. It would seem young Billy Shakespeare could have saved himself a substantial amount of frenzied quill-work had he lived in the age of mobile phones. Why go to all that trouble writing out those sonnets (SN8TS) when he could have wooed the chastity belt off his beloved with the likes of "SHL I CMPR U2 A SUMRS DAY?" and whizzed it off from his Nokia?

The phrases suggested by the oracles of man-nabbing range from the clunkingly cheesy CUIMD ("see you in my dreams") to the pleadingly cheeky BGWM ("be gentle with me") to the outright desperate SXWME? ("sex with me?"). I imagine this is only a good idea if it's a recognised abbreviation, as it might be a bit baffling to just start making up your own. Still , it would be a good way to put off potential text-stalkers. You get sent an thoroughly unsolicited "hot4U!" from some undesirable oily tick - they can easily be deterred with an impenetrable "K@FD UR M(RD&W)" - that's if you don't opt for the less indirect "FOAD".

Apparently text messaging rates increase substantially between 10pm and 2am on Friday and Saturday nights - alcohol fuelled desire combining with a way of flirting that doesn't compromises your social inhibitions. Blurred vision, errant thumbwork and a downturn in coherence come into play, though; no doubt resulting in lots of "I RELI 4KIN LV U". I�m not saying we need to return to calligraphy and sealing wax (unless that�s what your really into) but I�m still dubious of any relationship that started without vowels or prepositions.

�This story is old, I know, but it goes on�this story is old, I know, but it goes on��

Today�s bequiffed miserablist