I was expecting someone to call, so I wasn't surprised by the ring of the doorbell. I was surprised by who was stood there though; a young-ish woman, about my age, with a child, both smartly dressed. I'd guessed at what they might be calling for as soon as I saw them. She asked me if I'd be interested in their magazine. I politely declined, and she chose not to argue the point. I closed the door, and then made my way back into the front room, from where I could watch them walk back down the path. They paused for a moment outside the house before going on their way.

Question; is it wrong to fancy a Jehovah's Witness when she comes to your door? It feels wrong. I don't have any religious convictions - the state of the world tends to leave me thinking that atheism really is the way forward - but I feel that fancying someone who does, even when she happens to be an attractive woman, seems wrong, as if I'm going to be struck down for doing so by a supreme being that I don't think exists.

The worst of it is that this isn't the first time that this sort of thing has happened. I was walking past a Catholic church at chucking-out time a couple of weeks ago, and found myself following a couple of particularly attractive and nicely dressed young ladies and wondering if religion might be the answer, and if those really fat and saggy old women that I used to see when I walked past the Catholic primary school on the way to my own all those years ago started out like that. And I have seen lots of episodes of Father Ted, so I'm sure I'd be able to fit in...

On the other hand, I do rather like spending my weekends sitting around in old jeans and not shaving or showering unless I really have to, and I'm not sure religion is really compatible with doing that. (I'm not sure that having a girlfriend is compatible with it either, which probably explains a lot.) And there is the throwing aside of everything I believe in on the offchance of getting off with someone nice, but the prospects seem remote, and anyway it sounds more like a bad sitcom plot than real life.

I'm waiting for the lift. Someone comes through the doors to join me. I've not seen her before. She nods and smiles at me, before checking that I've pressed the button to call the lift. She's nice. From one of the lift doors we hear some raised voices from the men who are carrying out repairs. We both look at the door the hollering is coming from, then at each other and smile again.

Say something, says the voice in my head. Think of something funny to say and then say it. Go on. It can't be difficult. But the part of my head that thinks of clever and funny things to say refuses to co-operate, and I stand there like an amiable lemon.

Eventually the lift comes. I stand to one side to let her board first, in the same polite and gentlemanly and foolish manner I'd done with the train a few days previously. She stands in one corner. I stand in another. We begin the long journey down to the ground floor.

Come on, think of something to say. She's clearly lovely. But still nothing comes to mind. And that, my friends, is the very essence of the University of No Girlfriend. She's a captive audience, she's got no reason to hate me from the off; I've got nothing to lose, everything to gain, and yet the best I can offer is a polite silence.

I follow her out of the building, and she turns in the direction that I'm intending to go. Which wouldn't be a problem, but she's not walking particularly quickly, and I realise that if I set off at my usual pace I'm going to end up walking alongside her for at least part of the way, and clearly this is going to make things rather awkward should we ever find ourselves waiting for the lift again and I happened to think of something fascinating to say. At first I try to walk really slowly, as if deep in thought and not sure about where I want to go, but clearly that wasn't going to work and so I decided to move as far across the pavement as possible so that she couldn't really see me going past her.

Later on, having spent some time browsing around the shop I'd been headed for, I found myself stood behind her again at the traffic lights. At this point I began to worry that it was beginning to look like stalking, and so I turned on my heal and headed in the opposite direction.

The train was slightly delayed. I scanned the platform to see if there was any sign of the girl at the station, as I'd seen her for the first time in ages a couple of days previously when I'd had to go in late; it had led to a re-think on the subject of women wearing jeans tucked into boots. There was no sign of her, however, and so when the train arrived I reluctantly made my way towards the doors.

I reached them at the same time as two women. I stopped to let them go first, because I'm polite and gentlemanly and foolish like that. Because of the slight delay the train was more crowded than usual, and so I had to shuffle down inside the carriage. I put my headphones on and didn't really think about it, or indeed anything much, any further. And yet, as the journey progressed, I became aware that someone was watching me. I glanced around as nonchalantly as I could manage, and caught one of the women I'd allowed to board the train's head snapping away in the guilty manner that I'm all too familiar with.

"Hey", I thought, "you've still got it". And then I paused, and thought "hang on, you never had anything in the first place But you've certainly got something from somewhere. Maybe the years are being good to you, or something like that anyway". She was quite nice as well. I made a mental note to arrive at the station slightly later the next day, in the hope of affecting a meeting.

Arriving at my destination, I found myself in need of a pee and headed straight to the toilet. Because hygiene is important I washed my hands, and as I did so I looked up into the mirror and noticed that, in my hurry to leave the house while ensuring that my mouth was protected against the ravages of the cold, I'd managed to smear Lypsyl all over my top lip and that the effect was to make me look like some sort of inverse clown. Still, I'd had a nice half hour deluding myself, so I suppose it wasn't such a bad thing. Actually, that's not true.

During the always-curious period between Christmas and New Year I was sat on a tube train that had ground to a prolonged halt at a station. Looking out of the window, my attention was drawn to an advert featuring a couple enjoying each others company, above the legend "Pull a cracker this Christmas!". Sadly I'd already missed the event that was being advertised, but decided to visit the website mentioned anyway. It's "specifically for the attractive, articulate, confident and eligible", apparently, and so it would have been ideal for me, because I'm eligible. (Mind you, the couple grinning happily at the camera really ought to have got their tree down by now.)

I thought about this earlier today as I made my way along the High Road, when my attention was drawn to another poster. This was for a dating site, albeit not one that I've ever joined, and next to the picture of a happy couple staring intently at each other even though some sort of a disaster was imminent, one of them about to fall down a manhole or something similar, was a guarantee to find you someone "special" and a promise of six months free membership if you don't.

I reckon that this is quite a fiendish move on their part. Person sees poster, thinks "that looks like a bargain", signs up. Chances are that if they don't find this mysterious someone special they're going to give up disconsolately long before their six months is up (voice of experience and all that) and aren't going to be interested in an extra six months. And even if they are still plugging away after six months, chances are that they're going to be too embarrassed to ask for their extra time anyway ("Dear sir or madam, I am so inadequate that I haven't managed to as much as get off with anyone from your site despite being on it for six months. Please can I have some extra time for free." This email is never going to be sent).

(Strictly for research purposes, I had a look at the site and was intrigued by the terms and conditions for the free six months. How are they going to tell, for example, that someone has "created a truthful profile"? And "respond to, or initiate communication with at least 5 members each month"? I realise that not everyone is so doubt-addled as I am with these things, but trying to compose fascinating e-mails to impress 30 different people sounds less like an exciting way to meet new people and more like a new and exquisite form of torture. Interestingly, they don't seem to define what someone "special" might be; presumably if you did get together with someone you'd met off of there you could claim the extra time by saying that you're just trying to make someone jealous, or that you were just using them for sex, or that they're a particularly good cook but the conversation is pretty dull and it definitely isn't going to last.)

I'm almost tempted to join just to see if I can meet all the conditions and claim my six months extra free. Actually, that's a lie.

Back at the High Street, the next hoarding featured a picture of a woman lounging about and wearing nothing but her bra and pants. The bra was looked like quite an exciting sort of a bra. The pants were quite small. I can't say I really noticed the woman's expression, but I'll lay fairly good odds that it was of the 'come hither' variety. I decided that the placing of the posters probably wasn't accidental.

A few months ago, I became infuriated by an advert. And then I went through my giving up phase, and so I didn't think to write about it, and by the time I felt compelled to return to the University it'd gone off the air and I didn't really think about it. Until this evening, when an innocent evening's television viewing was disrupted by it turning up again.

You've probably seen it. It begins with a car pulling to a halt. We see a couple in the car; the woman turns, fiddles with her hair and says "would you like to come in for (slight pause) coffee?"

Let us look at this at this pair more closely.

Now, the woman is... well, she's quite attractive, I suppose. She does a decent line in seductive glances, she's wearing quite a nice dress, and, and here's the key thing, she's speaking with a foreign accent. And this transforms her from being merely "some woman in an advert" into something rather more interesting, because, and it may just be me on this, there are few things more alluring than a woman with a foreign accent speaking slightly-awkward English. (*) And what makes it even more appealing in this case is the little hesitation as she speaks, playfully pretending that she's not sure of what she's saying when she knows exactly what is implied by the word "coffee".

The man, meanwhile... as an ugly man who is aware of his own ugliness, I have absolutely no qualms about calling other men ugly. And goodness me, whether it's his stupid frizzy 80s footballer hair, his stupid facial fuzz that makes him look like a 14 year old trying to grow a moustache in an attempt to impress girls who only go out with 17 year olds with provisional licenses, or his stupid jumper, he's ugly. And yet here he is, in the car, being propositioned by this certainly-not-unattractive woman purring at him with her mysterious voice.

Who he turns down in favour of getting a cup of coffee from a petrol station.

I can only conclude that the idea was to emphasise the excellence of the coffee by making the woman being turned down in its favour so far out of the bloke's league, but frankly I feel that it's backfired. Even if a man that ugly had managed to persuade a woman that attractive to go to the pictures or for dinner or whatever with him, there is absolutely no way in the world he'd turn her down, no matter how bad her coffee might be. She's not just blatantly inviting him in for sex, but doing so in such a way that hints that all sorts of intrigue and dirty things may happen. He is not, under any circumstances, going to go to a garage instead. The overriding message I get from this is nothing to do with coffee, but is "come to our service station, and meet ugly idiots".

(*) Obviously this doesn't apply to someone from Mumbai who gets you out of the shower to try and sell you cheaper phone calls. If they prefaced their calls by asking you how you were and if you fancied going to the pictures tonight, possibly they might sound a bit more appealing, but it's always straight into the trying-to-sell-you-something-you-don't-want bit of the conversation with them. Tsk.

I'm having my hair cut by a woman who's cut my hair on several occasions before. We're exchanging the usual sort of chat, about why I'm here on a weekday, about what we're doing for Christmas, about the stuff you usually chat about when you're having your hair cut. We've established that I''m going to my parents' for Christmas, and so she asks if I have a girlfriend at the moment. I say no, naturally. "You used to have one though, didn't you?" she asks.

Probably just idle chat, or maybe she's mistaken me for someone else. Goodness knows, they must have enough people passing through here each day.

Now, as we know, I haven't. Or not someone I could call my girlfriend without inducing a severe look or coughing fit from the woman being referred to, anyway. And I haven't even had one of those for, well, years. And yet if I admit this, I'm going to look weird. There's no two ways about it.

Now, ridiculous at it may seem, I've never invented a girlfriend before. I've occasionally hinted that there may be something going on when nothing of the type exists (which I suspect fooled no-one, but never mind), but I've never attempted to invent a girlfriend. There is a reason for this. Back when we were 17, one of my chums had a very real girlfriend, who existed and we met and everything. Another chum had a girlfriend as well. He was quite a radical sort of fellow, and while he was engaging in political activity he met a girl of fellow persuasions, and as they handed out leaflets and such adolescent love blossomed. He wouldn't let her meet us, though, on the grounds that he was ashamed of us.

Yeah, right.

And ever since I've been wary of inventing a girlfriend, on the grounds that if even an accomplished bullshitter like my young friend, who would go on to invent a string of equally fictitious ladyfriends that nobody ever met, couldn't convincingly create a girlfriend for himself, what chance would a particularly feeble liar like myself have? And yet here I am in the barber's chair, being given a chance to engage in a flight of fancy all of my own, and with none of the pressure that comes from having to keep the fiction up.

So I say "yeah, not for a while now though". It's almost true, when you think about it.

My hair was already rather short by this stage, so there wasn't too much time to establish the details about my ex. It turns out that it didn't end with a big row - it just came to an end, although I did have a few suspicions about stuff that was going on, but I didn't really want to bring them up, and sometimes things just come to an end like that anyway. It's quite useful at this time of year not to have to worry about buying her a present, but on the downside I do miss having someone to do the Christmas shopping with, because she was always much better at it than I was and full of ideas for little knick-knacks to get people. I was worried about this seeming quite nasty, as if all she was was a glorified shopping assistant, but I suppose it's better than missing her for... well, you know. I'm enjoying being single, anyway, although I'm sure I'll get fed up with it sooner or later.

I wonder if I got away with it. Next time I'm going to have a whole backstory worked out in advance.

So I'd given up. Much as I'd tried to convince myself otherwise, it was clear that the moment I met someone I, y'know, liked, I found myself utterly unable to talk to them without making an utter arse of myself. And even if I ever did get past that stage, I was so entirely unsuited to having a girlfriend that there seemed no point in even thinking about it. "Son", I said to myself, "you'll be a batchelor boy, and... hold on a moment, that's not the song I was thinking of at all. Mind you, I bet that even Cliff has a better record than I do with wom... am I thinking out loud again? Drat."

So I deleted myself from the dating sites, I swore to stop taking a second glance at anyone I might pass in the street, and when I went out for the evening I kept the company of my friends and didn't let my eye rove, And I lived with this quite happily. In fact, I lived with this quite happily for a few months. Oh, there was the occasional longing glance at the girl who works in the bakers, but aside from that I didn't feel any paricular sense that anything was missing from my life. And then...

I'm stood at a bar at the back of a slightly sweaty gig. It's crowded and the barman, having served the person stood next to me, has started going back the other way. Someone moves into the space next to me and the barman chooses to serve them. I consider harumphing and pointing out that actually I'd been standing there for quite some time now, but then I come over all British and say nothing. However, in my head I'm trying to subliminally persuade the barman to turn his attentions to me by thinking "me next me next me next me next" at him. In fact, I'm thinking this so hard that I find myself unsure as to whether I'm thinking out loud again, or it just seems like it.

The person next to me receives their drinks. The barman looks at me and I ask for a pint. As the person next to me moves out I turn slightly to give them more room, and in doing so I find myself looking at them. I hadn't even really registered until this point that it was a woman.

And she's... oh, I don't know. Saying that she looks nice doesn't really cut it, because lots of people look nice. She looks... right. She looks like someone I want to know. And I'm here possibly whining "me next" like a small child queuing up for a go on the helter-skelter or something.

What to do? Follow her into the crowd, try and engage her in coversation hoping that she didn't hear me? Or, er, stand a safe distance away and hope that her friend goes to the loo at some point because I might be able to pluck up the courage if she's on her own, but never actually doing so? You can probably guess the eventual outcome.

As I sat on the train home quietly cursing to myself, a drunk-to-paralytic girl sat down opposite me. She had the hiccups. I considered trying to help her with her hiccups, and then I found myself thinking that she looked quite nice (albeit not, y'know, right), and then I thought that how nice she may or may not be wasn't important and that the real issue here was whether she was going to be sick on my shoes, and then I realised that I'd fallen back into the old trap. I was, once again, The University Of No Girlfriend. And then I went back to thinking that she looked quite nice. Didn't get around to helping her with her hiccups, but then I probably wouldn't have been much use anyway.