How Not to Find a Man to Fancy You

I heard some handy pieces of relationship advice. From Lulu. Who was hosting ‘Sunday Lovesongs’. Which I was listening to as a form of aversion therapy. Lulu is highly qualified to give relationship advice as she sang ‘Boom Bang-a-Bang’ in the Eurovision song contest.

This was her advice on the topic of finding your perfect man –

1. Remember, no matter how many many many many many many (I added a few of those manys) years you have been looking for Mr Right he is out there somewhere.

2. Be beautiful, or as beautiful as you can.

3. Think what attributes you might like in your perfect man. Then in order to find him think of the places a man with those sorts of attributes might be. Then go there. Looking beautiful, or as beautiful as you can.

I lost no time. I made myself as beautiful as I could with the limited resources available to me. These included:

A toothbrush
A hairbrush
Hair
Teeth

Then I was stuck. So I rushed to the computer opened Wikihow and put ‘Be Beautiful’ in. And proceeded to follow their advice:

1. ‘Seek beauty’. I assumed this was an important preliminary step so I found what beauty I could that was knocking around the house –
A clean kitchen floor
A cat
An apple
A carrot
A potato shaped like a potato
The Lawyer hunched over her revision.
Essentially that was it. And I ignored the Lawyer as any attempt to be beautiful alongside a seventeen-year-old version of a much more beautiful version of myself is fucking hopeless. I returned to contemplating the potato shaped like a potato.

2. ‘Recognise the beauty in yourself. Look in the mirror and search for beauty. By now, you've probably noticed that the most beautiful things in life are often subtle and hidden’ Well put I thought. I searched and eventually discovered that my right shoulder was of a moderately attractive nature.

3. ‘Enhance your physical beauty’. I did a few press ups.

4.’ Develop your inner beauty’. I drank some very pretty coloured fruit juice.

5. ‘Create beauty outside of yourself.’ I drew a flower on my arm.

6. ‘Character is beautiful’. Good.

It went on to advise listening to some music that made you dance and sing and smile and then your happiness will shine. What usually happens to me is people leave the room with comments like ‘life’s not a fucking musical’. Although, of course, mine is.

So, now I was beautiful I set forth to seek my perfect man in places that perfect men like to hide.
I wore the white fluffy dress with all the skirts as it was the only item of clothing I had that showed my shoulder off in all its moderate attractiveness.
I danced and sang to Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious as is appropriate and makes you sound precocious which surely is akin to beauty.
I drew a few more large pink felt-tip flowers on my arm just to make sure.
I took of the usual amount of character (in retrospect I probably should have toned that down a bit).

This is where I went:

To the DIY shop

He may have been my perfect man, I’m not sure. He had a nice bright orange uniform. And his chat-up line was original:
‘Would you mind leaving the store?’
Fairly obviously he wanted to get me on my own. I’ve given him my number.