Of course, the date didn’t happen. Of course it didn’t. In the continuing farce that is my love life, it was only to be expected. We decided on the day, but the place and time were still up for grabs … when he fell silent. And that was that.

Because if someone gives you the silent treatment, there’s not a lot you can do about it except be silent right back. My only consolation is that if someone doesn’t have the courtesy to drop you a line to tell you that they’ve gone off the idea/have other plans/have decided that they’d rather pull their finger nails out one by one they probably weren’t much of a catch anyway. Hey ho.

And so I went to the dating event. I went to the dating event where I met two very nice women, with whom I’ve stayed in contact, and I didn’t talk to a single man. Not one.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: if you don’t put yourself out there, you’re never going to get anywhere. You’ve got to be in it to win it. And of course, you’re right. And you should ‘never judge a book by its cover’ and ‘seize the day; procrastination is the thief of time’ and all those other platitudes that can so easily be applied to other people.

But you know what? I just wasn’t feeling it.

Maybe it’s because I’d been up since the crack of dawn (or possibly even a little before), maybe it’s because I’m so out of practice in the dating game or maybe it’s because the assembled examples of manhood just weren’t my kind of guys, but I simply couldn’t be bothered.

It felt as though I’d made a big enough effort by changing into slinky trousers and climbing into high heels without having to drag a conversation out of some sullen dude with IT hair.

(And I’m sorry, IT guys, there really is a stereotypical IT hairdo. It doesn’t mean you all have it; just a significant enough proportion to make it a stereotype. You may also want to debate what is meant by ‘IT guys’ but if you do, that probably means you are one.)

As I stood looking around the room – which was fairly strictly divided into groups of men and groups of women, with very little overlap – I thought how, under normal circumstances, I’d make the effort to start mingling and drag a couple of girls with me but … I just felt too tired to do it.

Physically tired … mentally tired … tired of the same old introductory conversations. Just tired.

So I sipped my free drink and then I sloped off home, more convinced than ever that dating sites and dating events and god knows what other wildly contrived ways there are to meet a mate just aren’t for me.

However, my blue funk of dating despair didn’t last long. Just a few days later, I was cheered by some Very Good News: a dear friend of mine, having snared her man in the not-too-dark-and-distant past, is getting married. And hurray for that!

Apart from being wildly happy for her (and, indeed, for him) it gives me hope that there are some good guys left in the world. Single ones, at that.

And although their numbers may be dwindling as, one by one, good women like her snap them up maybe – just maybe – it means that there’s someone out there for me, too.