This post has been many inspirations in the making, but I nearly didn’t write it. Believe it or not, if it’s deeply personal, I don’t write about it here.

Men on paper (or, more likely, on screen) are full of promise. There’s a guy on OKCupid at the moment who likes long walks in the country, pub lunches, and, get this: art house cinema (Do you know how rare that is?!) I should message him. And yet, somehow, I just can’t get that excited.

3D men, on the other hand, are exciting. And nightmarish. Don’t believe me? Read Girl with the Spotty Umbrella’s recent posts.

But Spring brings out all that’s best about them. On weekday evenings, they’re sat outside of all of the pubs that dot the route from my office to the bus stop, top buttons undone, shirt sleeves rolled up, drinking pints. The sight of their muscular forearms makes my knickers damp.

There’s something about the sheer physicality of an actual man compared to the ones on internet dating sites that, for me at least, will always make him win out.

I met the boy that way. I’d been internet dating for around 3 months. It hadn’t been awful, it had just been meh. These men said they liked what I liked – eating out, books, wine – but when it came down to it, shared interests just weren’t enough to give me butterflies. The boy, on the other hand, I met in a bar.

This was a guy who didn’t just *say* he liked wine, this was a guy who *really* liked wine. I’d just got back from a few days away, and I was still in holiday mode. It was late September, but still hot enough for a maxi dress. I nearly bailed: the 2D internet guys had put me off meeting anyone else. I don’t remember if he drank my wine as well as his own on that occasion, although he’s done it enough since. I overshared; he didn’t care. And, although at the end of the evening I still wasn’t sure I fancied him, I felt a little more optimistic about dating.

A week or so later, the Indian Summer hadn’t loosened its hold. We went to the pub and kissed by the river.

He’s a pain in the neck. A complete cunt on occasions (and yes, I stand by my dislike of that word in that context). He makes my heart race and my fingers tingle, not always in a good way. But he’s real, and he proves that you *can* still pick up a guy over a drink, despite what my mum says.

And for that reason alone, he’s worth it.