Ever caught the eye of a handsome stranger across a pile of 3-for-2s in your local bookshop and wished you could strike up a conversation? Or maybe you’ve got chatting to someone in a supermarket and it’s led to happily ever after? If Hollywood blockbusters and American TV shows are to be believed, single thirty-somethings are forever meeting potential partners in the dairy aisle and securing dates in art galleries. But does this kind of chance encounter ever happen in real life?

Social anthropologist and relationship expert Jean Smith is living proof that it does. Jean has travelled the world studying human behaviour, looking in particular at how humans flirt. Jean herself has met partners simply by striking up conversations in cafes and at bus stops, and for the last seven years has been passing on her skills and experiences through her own interactive flirting seminars and tours.

In your twenties it was easy to get chatting to people in bars and clubs, but once you get to a certain age, and would rather have a nice sit down somewhere quiet, trawling bars losses its appeal. This can leave single women wondering just how to meet like minded men. So, in the name of ‘journalism’, (honest), I recently decided to test out one of Jean’s ‘flirting tours of London’, hoping to pass on some top tips to single women everywhere.

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Today is the first day of National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo as it’s known to its chums. While several of my friends spend the month  of Movember growing moustaches in the name of raising awareness about cancers affecting men, I will be endeavouring to bang out 50,000 words of a novel.

The basic principle is this – most of us believe we Have A Book In Us. It’s one of those givens in life isn’t it? At some point in our lives we’ve all thought we could be the next J K Rowling. We just can’t be bothered. The aim of NaNoWriMo then isn’t to create a masterpiece, or to spend hours a day carefully crafting sentences, it is just to write, to make the time to sit down and actually get some words on a page. It doesn’t matter how good they are, it’s a matter of quantity rather quality, creating the habit of writing rather than thinking about writing and then getting tired and watching repeats of CSI instead. On the website, you can create a profile, monitor your progress, and link up with other writers. You can even share your work if you are feeling brave.

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This week I had an interview for a job. Although I haven’t been actively looking for a permanent job, I have been feeling a tad lonely working at home, and was thinking it would be nice to have some new work friends, a reason to wash my hair every day, and someone else to make my coffee now and again. So when this opportunity came along, and I was asked if I would be interested in applying, I thought I should go for it.

I’ve always enjoyed job interviews, with much the same perverse pleasure that I get from exams. At heart I am a over-competitive, under-confident exhibitionist. It sounds like an odd combination, but it isn’t really – I love being marked, being praised, and I strive to do well so that people will tell me how clever I am.

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This week, one of my favourite bloggers, Mommy has a Headache, tagged me in a post, asking me to come up with my recipe for a perfect man – the top ten things I look for in a potential partner. As she pointed out, it could be great advertising after all. If you can tick seven or more, please invite me out for dinner.

I fully appreciate of course that my Mr Right will very likely match up to none of these things. I have been in a flighty mood this week though, so I was glad of an excuse not to do some real work. So, here goes:

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I was sat at the kitchen table at nine o’clock this morning, minding my own business, making my way through my second cup of coffee of the morning, when a new email pinged into my inbox.

“Morning Jo!” said the subject line.

“Morning email!” I thought to myself.

The email was from the producer of a programme on BBC Radio Kent, asking if I would be available to comment on a story in The Daily Mail today about whether or not it is OK to ask people to take their shoes off when they come into your house. Clearly someone has been spreading rumours about my lack of enthusiasm for housework and my generally filthy carpets.

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This evening I have been listening to The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.

There are certain songs or albums that always trigger memories for me. I can’t listen to Tap on my Window for instance without thinking of a certain man, and if I hear Run DMC vs Jason Nevins, It’s Like That, I’m 19 again, getting ready for a night in a crappy club, drinking peach schnapps.

Lauryn Hill reminds me of a particular time during my second year of university. I was 20 years old, a single mum of a three-year-old, commuting two hours a day to get to lectures. I didn’t get to do any of the social stuff, or even really get to hang out much, so there was very little opportunity for any sort of drunken debauchery.

However, I had my eye on a boy…

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How many days do you leave it before you call?

How long should you leave between relationships?

Can love survive over long distances?

How many dates before your first kiss? How many more before you sleep with someone new?

How big an age gap is too big?

How many sexual partners should you aspire to as a man? How many is it acceptable to admit to as a woman?

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OK, I admit it! I’m a terrible mummy! I’ve been too busy working to even notice my poor baby lying unattended and unloved in a quiet corner of the study. For a while it whimpered quietly, hoping to attract my attention, but eventually it gave up, the tears dried on its cheeks, and it fell silent…

I’m not talking about my real children of course, don’t call Social Services, they are used to a bit of healthy neglect. It’s good for them. It teaches them to be independent.

I’m talking of course about my blog.

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I was recently invited by my bank to go into the local branch for a ‘free financial review’. Of course what they actually mean is ‘please come in so we can try and sell you things’, but it was a slow week, and working at home makes you a little desperate for adult company, so I thought I’d give it a go. Needless to say I left the review with even fewer products than I started with.

Generally I’m one of life’s risk takers. It almost seems to be a self-destructive thing sometimes – I will deliberately be late back for the car park, always have that extra shot of sambuca, and occasionally I even leave my front door wide open when I go out, just to see what happens. Don’t tell anyone that though – I don’t want burglars.

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Last night I had one of those dreams about being in love.

When I was younger I used to have them about piles of pound coins, huge mountains of them that I would discover behind the sofa and run my hands through greedily. Now I have them about men.

The man in question is normally someone I have never met before, never seen before (although it was recently Peter Jones from Dragons Den), but I always just KNOW. He is The One.

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One of our Quality-time-family days-out over the summer holidays was to Wookey Hole – you may remember it being in the news a while ago when they advertised for a new witch. (What a job!)

We went with our friends Vicky and Ashley, and we really did have a lovely time. It’s one of those places that definitely makes the most of the space – it’s built around some caves and an old paper mill, and hats off to them for the amount of entertainment they have managed to cram in. In terms of ice-cream outlets per square foot, you certainly get value for money.

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This month I have been reading Freedom, the new book from Jonathan Franzen.

I haven’t read anything by Franzen before, so I wasn’t really sure what to expect, and if I’m honest I was rather daunted by sheer chunkiness of it. 570 pages to be exact.

I do love reading, I really do. So much so that in 2008 I made a resolution to read 100 books in the year, and managed 104. But, at the moment I just don’t seem to have the time – I read four pages in bed, fall asleep, then have to go back two the next night to remind myself what happened. I thought Freedom was going to take me years…

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