What provoked this outburst of enthusiasm for life and action (previously nigh on unknown in me)? Well, a friend had idly begun internet dating, but it isn't reaaaally internet dating, you see, because it's just lunch. It's just two people who want to eat lunch and talk to someone. It's not a date, it's just meeting interesting people -- we could discuss anything from French existentialist poets to whether global warming is really happening or if the scientists have got it wrong.

I will meet other witty, worldly, well-read professionals who are seizing the day, or at least the precious hour in the middle of the day we have to call our own, with which we usually do the same old same old.

Oh wasn't I impressed with myself. How out there, how liberal-minded, how, um, deluded. I wasn't entering into the equivalent of a social networking website-enabled debating society. It was internet dating for people who can't commit to a real date and cough up to buy a lady a dinner. It soon became incredibly unendearing when men's profiles told me I could buy them lunch. My worldly, out-there, liberal self evaporated and my prissy old-fashioned lady returned.

However, I took a shine to a couple of people after messaging them a few times. Yes, they were all men. Strangely, women were uneffusive in their replies to my offer of dining, dishing gossip and bonding like bezzie mates. I said bezzie mates, not lezzie mates. It's just lunch, right?

How wrong could you be? Of course it's not just lunch, and I don't think Mr Married thought it was just lunch either. I can still feel his slimey eyes on me, mentally undressing me as I struggled to shove a phallic tuna wrap into my mouth without losing the contents all over my beautiful new white summer dress (bought in a fit of optimism that we'd have more than about five minutes of summer weather).

I don't think Mr Culchie -- who desperately wants to find a woman so he doesn't have to navigate the complicated social scene in 'de big schmoke' -- saw it as just lunch either. He practically invited the Mammy along. I felt like a breeding mare.

They say there's no such thing as a free lunch and it seems to be true. This lunch lark with men ranging from sleazy to moronic to morose (don't get me started on the 'poet') has cost my sanity dear. And when I think of all the shoes that I could have bought in those lunch hours. Hmm, maybe I'll try speed dating next -- I'm well experienced in dealing with three-minute encounters!