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This could be about your best friend. Or your girlfriend. Or it might be about you.
Are you Tasha - single and still searching?
Are you one of her three best friends? Andy, hooked on passion; Mel, stuck in a relationship with a bastard; or Emma, endlessly waiting for her other half to propose?
Do you know an Andrew - suave, good-looking and head over heels in love ... with himself? Or a Simon - allergic to commitment and dangerously treacherous? Or an Adam - handsome, kind, humorous, but too nice to be sexy?
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I was never supposed to be single at thirty years old. I was supposed to be like my mother, wasn't I? Married, a couple of kids, a nice home with Colefax and Fowler wallpaper and a husband with a sports car and a mistress or two.
Well, to be honest I would mind about the mistresses, but not as much as I mind being single. What I'd really, really love is a chance to walk down that aisle dressed in a cloud of white, and let's face it, I'm up there at the top, gathering dust.
It can't be that unusual, surely, to be thirty years old and to spend most of your spare time dreaming about the most important day of your life? I don't know, perhaps it's just me, perhaps other women redirect their energies into their careers. Perhaps I'm just a desperately sad example of womanhood. Oh God, I hope not.
It's not as if I haven't had relationships, although, admittedly, none of them have come close to proposing. I've come close to thinking they were my potential husband. A bit too close. Every time. But hey, if you're going to go into it you may as well go into it thinking this time he might be Mr Right, as opposed to Mr Right-for-three-weeks-before-he-does-his-usual-disappearing-act.
Sometimes I think it's me. I think I must be doing something wrong, giving out subliminal messages so they can smell the desperation, read the neon lights on my forehead ... 'KEEP AWAY FROM THIS WOMAN, SHE IS LOOKING FOR COMMITMENT', but most of the time I think it's them. Bastards. All of them.
But I never quite lose hope that my perfect man, my soulmate, is out there waiting for me, and every time my heart gets broken I think that next time it's going to be different.
And I'm a sucker for big, strong, handsome men. Exactly the type my mother always told me to avoid. 'Go for the ugly ones,' she always used to say, 'then they'll be grateful.' But she landed up with my handsome father, so she's never had the pleasure of that particular experience.
And the problem with small men is they make you feel like an Amazonian giant. At least they do if you're 5'8½'' and a size twelve, or thereabouts, the product of constant dieting in public, and constant bingeing in private.
Big men are far better. They put their arms around you, their head resting on yours and you feel like a little girl; safe from the big bad world; as if nothing could ever go wrong again.
So here I am, and for your information I am neither fat, ugly, nor socially dysfunctional. Most people think I'm twenty-six, which secretly annoys the hell out of me, because I like to think of myself as mature and sophisticated, and I'm generally thought of as strikingly attractive.
I know this because the men - when they're still in the stages of being kind to me - say this, but unfortunately I've always longed to be strikingly pretty. I've tried being pretty, painting on big eyes and looking coyly out from under my fringe, but pretty can't be attained. Pretty, you either are or you aren't.
I'm successful, in a fashion. I earn enough money to go on shopping binges at Joseph every three months or so, and I own my own flat. OK, it's not in the smartest part of London, but if you closed your eyes between the car and the front door, you might, only might mind, just think you were in Belgravia. Apart from the lingering smell of cat pee that is.
Of course I have cats. What self-respecting single career woman of thirty who's secretly desperately longing to give it all up for the tall, rich stranger of her dreams doesn't have cats? They're my babies. Harvey and Stanley.
They might be stupid names, but I quite like the idea of cats having human names, particularly ones you don't expect. The greatest name I ever heard was Dave the cat. A cat called Dave, brilliant isn't it? I can't stand Fluffys, or Squeaks, or Snowys. And then people wonder why their cats are arrogant. I'd be supercilious, too, if my mother had called me Fluffy.
Luckily she didn't. She called me Anastasia, Nasty to my enemies, Tasia, pronounced Tasha, to my friends, of which I have many.
Because just in case you're reading this and you happen to be happily married with other couples as friends, doing cosy couply things together, let me tell you that when you're a single girl, friends are vital.
I always thought the women's magazines were talking a load of crap when they told you to forget about men, crack open a bottle of wine and sit around with your girlfriends cackling about sex, but it's true.
I still can't quite believe it's true because it's only recently, well, within the last three years, that I've discovered this group of female friends, but that's exactly what we do, once a week, and just in case you're thinking it's sad and lonely, it's not. It's great.
There's me, naturally, Andrea, commonly known as Andy, Mel, and Emma.
And I suppose, much as I hate the term 'ladettes', that's exactly what we are, except we all despise football. Actually Andy says she loves football, and she claims to support Liverpool, but she only says it for two reasons: she fancies Stan Collymore, and she thinks it impresses men.
They are impressed, but they don't fancy her because Andrea is everything I dread. She's more blokeish than most of the 'blokes' I know. If a guy's drinking beer, Andrea will instantly challenge him to a drinking competition, and she usually wins. Attractive? I don't think so. They all think she's a great laugh but they wouldn't want to wake up next to her.
You think I'm bitter? If you'd been dumped from a great height by what feels like practically every single man in London, you'd be slightly bitter. But bear with me and you'll discover I'm not quite as bitter as I sound.
In case you're wondering how I earn my money, I'm a television producer. A bit of a joke, isn't it? Me who leads such an exciting glamorous life, producing a daytime television show, me who rubs shoulders with the stars every day of her life, me who can't find a bloody man.
But I've had some fun on the show, I grant you. I remember one time an actor came on as a guest - can't tell you who he is, much as I'd like to, because he's very famous, and very famously married to an equally famous wife. The night before the show I had to go to his hotel to brief him, you know, just to check my researcher had got the right stuff, and there we were, drinking gin and tonics in the hotel bar, with him rubbing my leg under the table.
I can't deny I fancied him rotten and I followed him upstairs to make sure we 'hadn't left anything out'. Gave him the blow job to end all blow jobs. I'll admit it didn't do a lot for me, but then again, I've dined out on that story for nearly four years. I would tell you too you understand, but we're not exactly close friends, and I haven't decided whether or not I can trust you.
But what I have decided is to tell you about my life, and for all this hard, career-type stuff, I'm a real softie inside. The classic scratch the surface and you'll find marshmallow stuff. You've got to be hard in television, I didn't make it this far just by dishing out the odd blow job, but put me in a room with a man I could love, a man who could take care of me, and I'm jelly, bloody jelly.
That's my problem you see. They meet me and think I spell danger, glamour, excitement, and then two weeks down the line, right about the time I'm trying to move my toothbrush into their bathroom cabinet and my silk night-dress under their pillow, they realise I'm not so different after all.
And after I've cooked them gourmet meals, because I'm an excellent cook, and added a few flowers and feminine touches to their bachelor pads, they know I could make a good wife. Actually I'd make a bloody superb wife, and they're off, like shit from a shovel.
I'd love to take you back over my whole life, but you probably wouldn't be that interested. Two parents, middle-class, comfortable, even wealthy I suppose, and not very interested in me.
I was the classic wild child, except I think I probably could have been a bit more wild, a bit more crazy, but underneath the good girl was always fighting to get out. Maybe that's why people think I'm a bitch now. I spent so many years trying to be good, being walked over by everyone, when I decided to stand up for my rights, people started getting scared, and what do people do when they're scared of you? Exactly. They call you a bitch. But my close friends know that's not true, and I suppose they're the only ones that really matter.
Hang on, the doorbell's ringing. God I hate people dropping in unexpectedly. This guy I used to fancy, Anthony, once came over when I was in a grubby old bathrobe with legs that were booked in for a leg wax the following week. I looked a state, and I had to sit there and talk to him, trying to hide my gorilla legs. We never got it together, unsurprisingly.
It's OK though, it's Andy. She probably wants to hear about the last one, the three-monther, bit of a record for me. For all her faults, Andy's great, always makes you feel better. Every time I get dumped I turn first to Mel to ease the pain, and then to Andy to cheer me up, and inevitably I leave feeling the world's a better place. Good job she joined us now, before I get seriously depressed.
You may as well join us, sit down, kick your shoes off and don't worry, it's a smokers flat. Beer or Chardonnay, which would you prefer?
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