You don’t get many men falling over themselves to tell you about their childhood when you first start dating. People who had idyllic ones don’t usually feel the need to wheel them out to make conversation. Unless we had a very bad one, or grew up with celebrities or politicians for parents or something, there’s very little to say about one’s childhood beyond the usual bewilderment at how all the chocolate bars were bigger and everyone got smacked on the legs in the supermarket. The teenage rebel however, idolises his childhood self....

Some are scared to be by themselves, while others revel in solitude. And most of us nestle somewhere in between. Give us a roomful of people and we’ll crave a padded cell, yet watch us walk into an empty room and cry for company like a puppy spending its first night away from its mother. I am moving in with my boyfriend next month. It will be the first time in five years I have had to live with anybody. I knew this time would come eventually – that day...

Last night my boyfriend and I were on a train coming back from a few drinks with a friend. At one stop, a group of younger people got on. They were in their twenties, I guess. They had been to some sort of concert and were wearing various items of band merchandise. I suppose 10 years ago we’d have said they were “emo” – nobody says that any more, do they? There were four of them. One looked like an artist’s impression of Guido Fawkes, there were two more devastatingly...

There are three things you should really avoid talking about on a first date. Food, politics and science fiction.  Star Wars, Star Trek, comic books, Doctor Who, Alien, the lot. Just avoid it if you can until you’re “going steady”, because if the sci-fi chat comes out too early on, the chances are you’ll have an intergalactic battle on your hands before you even get to the bedroom. So why is sci-fi a no-no? Put simply, it is extremely political, and sci-fi fans get very touchy when you don’t get their hobby....