I made a list of everyone I could plausibly date. It came to nineteen

I sat down last month and made an actual list of the people in this city I could plausibly date. It came to nineteen. I hold an opinion about every one of them, most of them hold one about me, and four are exes of friends. That is not a complaint. It is the arithmetic, and I would like to talk about it honestly rather than pretend the pool is deeper than it is.

Twenty nine, Salford, six years in, both directions. The good half of a scene this size is that nobody is a mystery. You cannot really be badly surprised by anybody here, because within a year of turning up you have heard everything about everyone from three separate angles.

The bad half is that there is no fresh start available anywhere. I cannot meet a person without already knowing how they behaved when something went wrong two years ago. And they know the same about me, including one year I would not particularly choose to be judged on.

So I am here for the one thing a board can do that a room cannot, which is produce somebody I have no existing opinion about. Somebody newer, somebody further out, somebody who has kept to themselves. They do not have to stay a stranger. I would just like the first three months to be about us rather than about the file.

What I want after that is entirely ordinary. One person, both ends of the rope, an evening a week, and years rather than a season.