My last first date

It was February 2017. I had given up my job at the BBC in Salford where I was working on Songs of Praise, and was living on a canal boat in West London, and teaching music part-time in a primary school.

On the advice of a male friend, I’d joined a new dating app the previous week. He reckoned it was better than the rest but I wasn’t holding out much hope. In the 13 years since my divorce, I’d been on – well, I dread to think how many – dates with so many different men and most of them had bee...