Mere mention of the word ‘date’ has always caused me a degree of discomfort. Not to mention what I think it is supposed to mean in practice: that, of my own free will, I should meet up with someone whom I either don’t know at all or only know slightly. This has never struck me as an especially wise way of behaving under any circumstances. There are many rational arguments against such behaviour, not least the fact that the probability that the meeting will turn out to be worth the effort is vanishingly small. We only have to count the number of interesting people we have met in our lives and
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