THE DAILY MALE - continues...

In a weird way I manage to compartmentalize. This interlude with Eurotrash in no way affects my feelings for CC which are in a totally separate box marked PARANOID FIXATION OF 2008.

If CC comes up trumps, all bets are off but I am hedging those bets by keeping the other horses in my stable fed and watered and exercising them around the paddock at regular intervals to ensure their readiness for riding if, as, and when required.

My masculine side endorses this behaviour, while my feminine side weeps and wails and rents its clothing.

Sunday. I have lunch with my family and power walk two miles around Regent’s Park with Calm Best Friend. This solves nothing but makes my calves ache rather pleasingly.

Monday. I finally meet Rough Stuff for dinner. He looks like a cross between Ray Winstone and Alec Baldwin both of whom I fancy, but I don’t fancy him. He’s a working-class geezer who appears to have broken into a Jermyn Street Gentleman’s Outfitters and walked off dressed in the spoils.

He’s hard-nosed and savvy with a film script life story, but the cockney accent really jars with me. Although I’m attentive enough, all I can think about is:

When I wake up in the morning, I’ll be seeing CC ‘tomorrow’.

Unless, of course, he bottles it…

Tuesday. Well whaddya know? I should have gone down to William Hill and bet my flat on it - I could’ve retired on the proceeds.

Didn't I know it? Didn't I FUCKING KNOW IT. I switch my mobile on at 8.47 a.m. and there are two texts. One’s a ‘Good Morning, Princess’ from Rough Stuff, the other is a voicemail alert.

I dial 901 and YUP! it’s CC ‘postponing’ our dinner date.

The fucking, wanking, cunting, shitting, cock sucking bastard has blown me out. To give myself time to absorb this, I go to the fridge and check the sell-by date on the cheese I bought for the infamous fondue. It’s good for another couple of weeks. I may boil his head in it. But not until it’s gone off.

He’s left me a jolly upbeat message, though, considering he’s a manic depressive, bipolar, emotionally-arrested, dysfunctional nutcase. His voice mail is positively bubbly which I find very annoying. How dare he sound normal when he’s calling to cancel me?

What’s happened is, he tells me cheerfully once he’s commented on what a beautiful day it is, (TOSSER!) that he’s got into the office and checked his diary and found that he’s double-booked tomorrow evening. He’s heading up a think tank for his senior management to institute a media-related strategy whereby high-profile hunter gatherers can brainstorm their passive-aggressive admin exec counterparts.

Oh for the love of Christ, get over yourself, you twat.

He does however apologize four times and offers an immediate alternative, suggesting that in order to make it up to me, instead of me cooking, he’ll take me out instead.

Cold Comfort Farm, but at least he didn’t say: ‘…so I’ll see you around’.

Funnily enough, I’m not actually that devastated because I know that once tomorrow has come and gone, I’ll be back to square one again with nothing to look forward to.

I replay the message about eight times but I don’t read anything more onerous into it except that which I presume to be the truth. It’s too convoluted to be otherwise even from a half-baked potato like him. I decide not to reply just yet. A little mind game, methinks.

I compose texts in my head then go to a business meeting which takes up the rest of the morning. At 1.30 p.m. when he’s almost certain to be at lunch, I text to say that I’ve received his message and when shall we re-schedule for?

I purposely ask a question in order to provoke an answer but none is forthcoming.

I wait all day to hear from him until I can stand it no longer, and at 8.45 p.m. I call him back. It goes straight to voicemail.

I say ‘Hi, it’s me. Call when you’re free’ in Voice no. 32 : Bright and Breezy but Three Steps Away from a Shotgun. I get no reply.

Yet again with this man, I'm left feeling sad, let down and disappointed. I’m even starting to piss myself off never mind anyone else, and all this for a person who’s about as much use to me as a glacier mint is to a polar bear.

I beat myself up a little bit more thinking I should have called him back this morning, when the matter was fresh in his mind and his diary on his desk in front of him.

Now I’ve used up my text credit and instead of a mind game, I have to play the much reviled waiting game. I can’t help thinking that he’s obviously ‘not that into me…’

I play around on a dating site and make arrangements to meet a 23-year-old which cheers me up no end.