Another day, another date. This week, it’s the turn of Mr Nice Guy. At least, I think he’s a nice guy, but he’s so reserved it’s hard to tell.

It’s also hard to tell when you’re chasing after a toddler who’s looking for conkers among the dog deposits in the local park and you’re not even sure how you ended up on this date anyway.

Allow me to explain…

It’s late on a Friday evening and I get a message from a guy on the dating site. I check out his profile and, if I’m honest, I find nothing that particularly attracts me, so – as dating site etiquette demands – I ignore the message.

And then I get another message, telling me that I’m “not willing to admit” that I “need to take a risk here. A simple chat and a coffee is what I expect.”

I feel slightly indignant. So you “expect” a coffee do you? Well, good for you.

And then the guy tells me that he thinks he knows me, and wonders if I “dare” to answer him.

To be honest, his face does look vaguely familiar, but that could just be the number of times I’ve seen it on the dating site. We’re fishing in a small pond in this town. Still, the tone of his message irks me and I reply that I have no idea if he knows me, but I surely don’t know him. And it’s not a question of daring, it’s a question of not being interested.

And I don’t know how, but there’s something about the way that he immediately backs down that makes me think he may not be the arrogant idiot he’s just made himself out to be and before I know it, I’ve agreed to go for a coffee with him the next afternoon.

So here we are, in the park, collecting conkers.

And he really doesn’t seem to be arrogant. In fact, it’s very hard to make any judgement on him at all, because he’s perfectly polite and pleasant and he doesn’t mind when the little guy assaults him and requests conker-carrying and all the rest, but I have very little idea of who he may be or what he might like or what makes him get out of bed in the morning.

It’s not that he’s cagey about his life: he tells me about his family and what brings him here and where he works and what he does but … somehow I get no idea of his personality and I feel none the wiser. I’m mightily thankful that he doesn’t fall into the Jekyll and Hyde category but, based on what I’ve seen so far, there’s nothing to suggest we’d be the next Bonnie and Clyde, either.

And so we take our leave.

I reply to his next message to say thank you for meeting up, but I don’t really imagine there’ll be any romance between us, though I’d be open to a friendly coffee now and then if he’d like. And this, I believe, was my mistake.

You see, I wasn’t playing hard to get or anything like that. I really did mean that I’d be up for a friendly coffee now and then … and nothing more.

Unfortunately, he seemed to read, “I don’t want to kiss you right away but keep persevering and it might happen.” Which is awkward.

He messages me frequently throughout the next couple of days, professing his friendship whilst wondering what it might be like to kiss me … and eventually suggests meeting at mine for a few drinks once the little man is in bed. And I may be completely wrong, but that doesn’t sound at all like a friendly proposition to me.

And so I do the only thing I can think of to get the message across: I ignore him. Which is rude and feels uncomfortable, but then so does deflecting someone’s over-enthusiastic attentions on a daily basis.

So that’s it; no more Mr Nice Guy and back to the drawing board for me. But I’m not giving up – oh no, I’m not. Because if I meet enough frogs, slippery little amphibians that they are, surely one of them, one day will be the prince that’s worth kissing…