As I walk towards Café Néro, my stomach feels knotted with nerves.

Of course “dates” are always slightly nerve-wracking, but more worrying than whether Mike will look the same as his photo on Grindr, and even more worrying than wondering if Mike will fancy me, are my own reactions if this should all go wrong.

Because the truth is that “dating” hasn’t been working particularly well for me. And my feelings of desperation about being single have not only pushed me to what feels like the the edge of ea breakdown, but are now being matched my weariness of the experience of modern dating.
So I have promised myself that this, today, is my last attempt. And I’m not sure where that leaves me if it all goes tits up yet again. Do I have to resign myself to being celibate until the end of days?

The problem is that in the ten years during which I was with Rob, (‘99 to ‘09), the world moved on. In fact I’m coming to see that the world not only moved on, but left me way, way behind.
Since we split up I have tried bars, nightclubs, and the internet.
The bars are full of kids, of course – kids who don’t even notice a forty-nine-year-old codger like myself and “chatting” which, last time I looked, was what you did when you wanted to meet a cute guy in a bar, seems to be a lost art.
When I have tried to talk to someone they have just looked vaguely embarrassed and shuffled away. Chatting, it would seem, now equals not speech, but typing messages into a computer, and the kids in the bars actually do seem to spend more time typing on their phones than talking to each other these days. The music makes real talking difficult, I suppose.
I worry sometimes that it’s just me getting slower, but everything really does seem faster now. TV has a reader on-screen telling you one bit of news and a scrolling banner (or two) telling you something entirely different.
Driving is no longer enough — you have to be able to look out for speed traps and scan for red light cameras and follow the signs and read the GPS and talk on the phone at the same time. <more>

Inventing Orlando: The redhead on the train.

There really was a readhead on the train.One autumn evening in 2004 we climbed aboard the local branch-line service at Ashford International together.

He got off at Ham Street, donning a cyclist's safety helmet (blue) while I went on to Rye.
I can't be the only person who, boarding a local service at Ashford while watching the Eurostars thunder past on the adjacent tracks, has heard his heart whisper like a pleading child – take me with you.

But on this occasion I had nine minutes to ponder the thought in the company of a handsome younger man with whom I exchanged neither word nor smile nor look. Nine minutes in which to think – what if...?

And so the idea of writing Getting Orlando came to me. Perhaps most novels are born that way. What if...? fires its starting pistol and the race of ideas begins.
The man on the train gave me an idea only of what Orlando looked like, not of who he was. And even my invented character's appearance changed subtly in my mind as I began to work on the story. <more>