Channel 4 has prompted me to think about getting healthy and putting myself out there to start dating again, but also to make a documentary as I do it. Over the past few nights I’ve been watching bits of Embarrassing fat bodies, Supersize vs Superskinny, Undateables and Gok’s style secrets. Merging them all together into one megamentary would be amazing.

First off, I could bare all on national TV to Drs Christian and Pixie and they can marvel at just how much I can carry under my breasts: not just a pen, but also a stapler, ruler and a calculator (I ought to remember this next time I go shoplifting in Staples). I’d gain great pleasure in the eat-off with an anorexic as I watch them eat my daily intake of enough pasta to feed three people and so much pop that their head explodes.

Next up, I’d challenge a dating agency to find me a woman who matches my specific needs, which is essentially me only thinner, sexy and feminine. Watching Undateables last night, there was a clip of a woman suffering from OCD. They showed her scrubbing her hands and then a short interview with her in which she was saying “I can’t have them touching me or coming near me, and I can’t have them in my house”… I couldn’t agree more. I’m not having anybody come into my house unless they come up to scratch domestically and have impeccable personal hygiene and grooming.

Finally, dear Gok Wan would have to work wonders on me and style me up, give me hints and tips and get me ready for my first date. I’d love Gok to style me. No, I’d love to see his face when he was asked to style me. “OK, darling, I’ve found this amazing combination of cable knit and corduroy that really brings out your personality and curves and says ‘Here I am, BACK OFF!'”.

I’ve just remembered that there’s a packet of chocolate digestives downstairs.

Across the line
I had lunch with a friend yesterday, one of the Old Trafford lesbians. Old Trafford is one of those areas of Manchester where gay people live when they’re settling down in stable relationships, but where it’s much less expensive than Chorlton, which is not too far away.

I often joke that people from that side of town would have a nosebleed if they had to cross Deansgate and head out north from the city and that we from these parts are tagged and that we set off alarms when cross the Salford border. The friend I had lunch with yesterday is charming, but slightly peculiar in that she thinks that anywhere north of the city has its own special Siberian climate. We’ve been enjoying some crips, wintery weather over the past couple of days and yesterday was one of those beautiful cold and sunny days. This prompted my friend to ask “Is the weather really bad where you are?”. I’m not sure what she thinks it’s like here, ten or so miles from Manchester. We have tarmac roads, electric streetlights, supermarkets, central heating, mobile phone signals… parking… we even have pretty much the same weather as people in Old Trafford.

Maybe a cultural exchange is called for. Actually, no. I like my location, with its proximity to lots of green stuff, sheep and other animals on the hill behind me, my neighbours’ chickens, the river just over there, the bats and the owls, with my parking spaces and the feeling that I’m not closed in by other properties in tight streets. And because it’s not the sort of location that people would look at if they’re relocating to the Manchester area, the people who live here are from here, so there’s a shared sense of recognition of certain local historic reference points, a common understanding of the area, a stable population and opportunities for chatting and gossiping with the neighbours. I don’t like the idea of living in a place where everybody is an outsider, it just seems odd.

[NB after edit #4. Proof read before hitting publish. That’s one punch to the head for every error that the internet pedants will come and burn your house down for.]