What is your idea of a good first date?

Please describe the person you’d ideally like to meet through this dating site.

Alison’s fingers hung in mid-air above the keyboard, like a pianist about to launch into a concerto, but inspiration remained elusive. It had been well over forty years since she’d been on a first date, after all: fish and chips on the sea front with Rich, and then walking shyly home together hand-in-hand, wondering if he would try to kiss her outside her front door. She pictured herself in the yellow cotton dress she’d liked to wear back then, when her waist was small and the world seemed full of possibilities. It seemed now like something that had happened to another woman.

Dinner, she typed hesitantly in answer to the first question, then had second thoughts and deleted her reply. Because dinner would be full of pitfalls, she realized. And as someone who strongly disliked bad manners at the table – people chomping their food, anyone talking with their mouth full, those idiots who made such a performance of tasting their wine, like they were some kind of connoisseur – Alison was almost certainly going to find herself put off. Maybe dinner was not the best option. The cinema, then? A play? At least she wouldn’t have to talk much, and there’d be less chance of disaster striking by her saying something daft, she reasoned. Then again, what if the date was more cultured than her and opted to see something highbrow and confusing? She’d end up feeling stupid, with nothing to say for herself. And what if the date was a perv who just wanted to take advantage of the dark surroundings to start fondling her thigh – or worse?

A walk on a summer’s day, she typed instead. That sounded romantic, at least, didn’t it? But heavens, what would she wear? Shorts and hiking boots? It wasn’t exactly a sexy look, even with her hair and make-up done. Plus – more alarmingly – you got some real weirdos, didn’t you, these days, who might attack her in the middle of nowhere, who might strangle her in a sunny meadow, dismember her on a remote part of the headland. She’d be found days later by dog walkers. Imagine Robyn’s bewildered face when the police knocked on her door to tell her the news.

No. No walks. No dinner, cinema or theatre.

A drink in the pub and a good chat, she typed eventually and left it at that, before she could start worrying about how cheap and unadventurous this answer might make her look. Bugger it, she’d be here all night otherwise.