Today, you’ll write about a person you’ve met in 2014. In your twist, develop and shape your portrait further in a character study.

The thing about meeting new people is that they either make no impression at all or they have a lasting impact on how you see yourself, live your life or how you feel. It seems to me that there is almost no in between.

I think a lot about the idea of coupling off and whether or not it’s something that I do, or should, aspire to. I try to think of myself as being a perfectly capable, whole, human being without needing a boyfriend to feel complete, but it’s hard to maintain that feeling when so much of our lives is spend engaging in the happily ever after fantasy. And that’s not even going into the part where a woman’s most valuable, fundamental role is as a mum.

In my attempts to find happiness as an individual, I go on a lot of dates. That sounds like it’s a completely contradictory statement, and perhaps it is, but I guess I’m looking for someone to share my life with, rather than someone who completes me, and I think that works. Most of the time the dating thing doesn’t go very well. I meet a lot of people who don’t make an impression.

Occasionally there are exceptions. Around Easter I actually managed to meet a man who I was interested to have a relationship with. I would consider it an important event in my life because I hadn’t been in a relationship for more than two years before that, since before I started this blog. It didn’t last, unfortunately, but it did give me confidence that there are people in the world who find me attractive and interesting. It’s something that I need reminding of every now and then.

So how would I describe him? I suppose the first word that comes to mind is small. I don’t mean short, he would be about the same height I am, about 175cm, but he was quite slight in build. He’s really into cycling so if you think about the cyclist physique that should give you a good starting point – small arms, thin chest, and wiry but muscular legs.

He had very fair skin, being of a ginger sort of complexion, and a completely bald head. Some men are blessed with thick, luscious hair, and others suffer from the severely receding hairline. For this particular man, his hair had decided to leave the top half of his head in his is early twenties, and he dealt with it by shaving the rest of his hair off.

In contrast to his smooth scalp, he sported a neatly trimmed gingery/blonde beard. He once said that it was to cover up a number of facial scars, but I didn’t feel it was pertinent to probe too deeply what those scars were. In any event, that were not immediately obvious underneath the hair, so I assumed they were fairly minor.

In addition to the beard, he accessorised his face with a set of thin-rimmed metal glasses. Rather more oval than the circular sort worn by John Lennon, the resemblance was still there (had I been younger, perhaps I would have been reminded of Harry Potter, but they’ll always be Lennon’s glasses to me).

Putting all of these aspects together, small, bald, beard, glasses, one could easily relegate him to the category ‘nerd’. I could also mention his interest in Reddit and job in I.T., neither of which really help with the impression.

But there’s more to his guy than a flippant pigeon-holing would allow. There are the little wrinkles around his eyes which speak of a capacity for laughter, delicate tender fingers which show kindness and dexterity, and the faded, flared jeans that appeared to be a permanent fixture of his wardrobe. Then there’s his ability to engage in intelligent feminist discourse, his keen and enquiring mind, his obvious and conspicuous care for people in his life who are having a rough time, like his sister and his best friend.

Since we broke up, I’ve tried to dissect what went wrong with the relationship, on paper it seemed like we were well suited, and initially it went strongly. But maybe it’s not useful to try to dissect matters of the heart. It was very pleasant while it lasted, and he is certainly an excellent human being. I enjoyed sharing those weeks with him, and I feel like I’ve learned a lot from it. I wish him all the best with finding someone to spend his life with, as I keep walking my own path and one day hope to have someone to walk with me.