My three dates

Whilst my chips are under the grill I'll tell you about my entire dating history. I have only been on three dates and they were all with Italians.

The third date took place about four or five months before I met my boyfriend. He was called Lorenzo and he'd been living in England for some time because he hated Italy. My friends from Torino found him for me in the college bar one Saturday night and we arranged to meet in the pub for a language exchange. I genuinely thought it was for a language exchange because I'm a bit thick like that. I only realised that it had been a date after I left the pub and noticed that we'd only spoken English. We didn't click and after that we never met socially again.

The second date was also with an Italian I met in the college bar. He was called Antonio and he looked a bit like Jesus. I knew his hometown so we spoke about that and arranged that I would go to his house for dinner that weekend. The day of the date arrived and I had a terrible hacking cough. I was very nervous and tried to dress up but as soon as he opened the door I realised that it was a horrible mistake. He wasn't my type at all. I obviously wasn't his either because after five minutes he called in his friend who was also a Veneto lad. He then spent the rest of the evening telling me how beautiful and mysterious one of my friends was.

My first date was with a vet called Guido. I was 19 and an Erasmus student in Italy. My friends and I went to a carnival party in a big old villa on the outskirts of Pisa. We met a very bubbly and excitable man dressed as a cat. He asked me if I would like to meet him for a drink one day so we arranged a mid-afternoon date for the next weekend. By the time the day arrived I wasn't at all excited. I'd never been on a date before and frankly I was wishing that I hadn't accepted. My Danish friend waited with me in Pisa's main square. We met a French student and when we told him what I was doing he rolled his eyes and smirked. My lack of excitement increased and I really wished that I wasn't going on this date. When Guido arrived he wasn't like the excitable cat I had met at the party. He was tall and quiet with strange eyes. He bought me a can of fanta in a bar, tried to talk whilst I sat silently squirming and then I made my excuses and left. I remember he offered to walk me to my Danish friend's house but I told him that she was a very private person and didn't want anyone to know where she lived.

Thank goodness I managed to meet my boyfriend without dating him first.