"Anyway, you shouldn't have any problems, advertising chick, flat, car, girl about town, you should be hanging out with friends drinking cocktails in London's finest selections of bars and restaurants. You'll have some suave type in a designer suit dropping his card in your lap in no time."
"Oh thanks and you make it sound so appealing. I don't want some slick prick staring down my cleavage, thanks."
"You don't?"

Larissa gives me that look down her nose again.

"I don't."
"Don't worry I'm sure there's a selection of types out there - some who do not stare down your cleavage while talking to you. I'm positive. I've seen Sex and the City."
"But that really isn't me, I'm not cocktail bar girl. Besides I don't think it's just me. It's lots of women I know who are over 30 and work. We don't do dinner and up town cocktails and get up at six thirty and start over again."
"So you're saying that even if I did get up off my backside and go out I wouldn't meet any Sex and the City type glamorous women?"
"I'm sure you might, what colour is your credit card?"
"You know last time I saw it I think it was a bluish kind of green, with bits of purple. Bit new age?"
"Well it's not one of the two core food groups: black or platinum."
"Damn, my chances are fast receding."
"There must be another way."
"You know I don't think there is. You could try internet dating?"
"Internet dating? The whole concept sounds depressing. It doesn't seem to allow for personality."
"Possibly true."
"You mean you haven't tried it?" Larissa asks.
"Not really. I've written about it and heard about it, but not you know...actually done it. I'm more your theory kind of bloke. Application is tricky."
"But you don't go out? It's ideal for you."
"Yeah, I know, besides I photo badly, apparently scowling is not attractive."
"Who would have guessed."
"Tell me about it."
"So what is 'you'?"
"That's a good question. I'm not totally sure I know. But I think it's something like girl looks over, we do the whole eyes meet thing, she walks up to me and we start talking - pretty much go from there."
"Sounds familiar. That must happen to you so often," Larissa says laughing.
"You know now you mention it? Not for a while."
"What kind of while are we talking about?"
"Let's see? Must be about the four going on five year kind of while."
"Remind me again how we met?"
"Lets see, I think we met the old fashion way. In a bar."
"That's right you were the guy in the corner."
"You were the girl in the middle."
"Were we drunk?"
"Not then, but definitely later."
"Whatever happened to just, you know, meeting people?"
"I think that was an urban myth."
"I don't believe it. Let's say that we just met. I mean literally minutes earlier, say it was sunny day down by the river, tell me how it happened," she says smiling.

It's a cool idea, it's like a story, a narrative of romance, so I start to think how it might have happened if we had just met whilst sitting down by the river watching people walk by enjoying a clear blue sunny winter's day.

"I like that, okay, tell me what you're doing first of all?"
"Okay, I'm with my friend, Charlotte."

And Larissa gives a little wave to her imaginary friend Charlotte.

"...we're enjoying a girly walk and talk down by the river, what about you?"
"Okay, I'm with Adam. Two blokes hanging out together like you and Charlotte. We're doing the same river thing, a bit of people watching, it's a perfect day for it after all. Anyway, I think we are vaguely heading towards the Royal Festival Hall, where there's bound to be some quaint folk or world music thing playing, plus Adam is always convinced it is a great place to meet women."

Larissa laughs at this reference to Adam, as she knows that Adam thinks most places are great for meeting women.

"Yeah, right, so I try to tell him yes it is, but for some reason only Danish and Japanese tourist women with just a few sentences in English, but you know what he's like - not easily put off."
"What a girl only needs a couple of serviceable phrases for what he has in mind?"
"You said that, I couldn't possibly comment. Besides, I think Adam believes he's fluent in the international language of lurve, which I'm total convinced is like Atlantis and is also a myth. It is right? A myth I mean?"
"Oh I think so, unless you happen to be a tall Greek god type I think they're hardwired to speak it. So let me see? To scupper Adam's plan you insist on stopping off at the NFT for coffee, so you could watch people buy books, a much underrated pastime, and drift along by the river?"

We are definitely on the same wavelength and I try to remind myself why it didn't work. Oh, yeah, that's right, it was the total lack of communication problem. Just a small detail.

"That's right, so we get coffee and we sit and we start to look, to watch people go by, watch the river, and then I see you sitting just across from us."
"Do I see you as well?"

I shake my head.

"No, not at first, I see you for a long time before you notice me. I'm doing that thing where you keep looking up and hoping that at some point the person who has caught your eye notices you too? It must be five minutes more maybe, before that happens. It's absolutely freezing and after a while Adam wants to go inside, but because I'd seen you sitting there I just had the feeling. I was already nervy even though I didn't think I would ever say anything to you, which of course I didn't."
"You didn't get up and speak to me? Oh I'm disappointed. I was expecting brimming confident guy to spin me a line."
"It's okay it gets better, but just then I'm rooted to the spot, it's like when sometimes, you have those moments and despite knowing that you don't have the courage to get up and walk across and start talking you don't want to move either? Well, it like that besides I'm the guy who likes to drink hot coffee in blasting sunlight whilst freezing and stealing the odd glance of this dark haired girl in a big red scarf."
"And it's about then that I look up isn't it?" Larissa asks.
"Yeah, then you look up and we hold eye contact for just a second," I say.
"Oh and there's a click isn't there? A little click like a static charge of electricity. Then I started to look away as girls do, but I see your head turning, and you smile. I didn't expect you to smile, as English boys never do. They seem to find it so hard to flirt like that."

True enough spontaneous flirting is difficult. I should have taken a class or something.

"So have you noticed anything about me while you were sitting there? What colour are my eyes?" Larissa grins at me when she says this and eyes me narrowly.

Oh boy, what can I say? Among the many crimes I committed was once telling Larissa not to do that thing, to give me that reproachful look, with her "big brown eyes". I'm not, Larissa replied, because my eyes are bloody well green. Stylish, I know.

"Oh I've started to notice loads and I started to read into the fact that I'm noticing things that sometimes I never notice until much later. I know you think I'm a cynical sack sometimes, and I am, but I think I've been radiated by the winter sunlight as I start babbling at Adam going on about how you look cold that you're cheeks were burning red and that your eyes were such a vivid green."
"They're definitely green are they?"

I nod, smile, suitably put in my place.

"Definitely green, a very affecting green, if I might add."
"I think I'll allow you to add that," she says.