Somebody loves me… I wonder who

Good news, everyone. Particularly for those of you who worry that I will be spending my old age all alone, trapped in spinsterhood and/or a first-floor terraced flat in south-east London, talking to jigsaws in various stages of completion as though they were real, living children. 'Oh, haven't you grown!?' 'Come on, I've baked you this cake, you may as well eat it.'

Because now I know for sure: He is out there. He. The One. Mr Right. Jeff. Whatever you want to call him.

How do I know? Because of this:


I noticed this sticker on a piece of plastic next to my seat during a recent bus journey to Forest Hill. As great bus journeys of the world go, it's not exactly Route 66 by Greyhound, iconically speaking, but you do get to go past the Horniman Museum, and that's not nothing.

I'm particularly alive to the possibility of random bus communications. Once, several years ago, I found the entire lyrics to Bob Dylan's You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go written out on a sheet of paper that was folded up and wedged down the side of my seat. By the time I got off the bus, I was convinced that this was a message meant only for me that had been planted there by a fellow passenger. The copper-bottomed clincher was the line 'Purple heather, Queen Anne lace', which was QUITE CLEARLY a reference to the fact I was wearing a purple cardigan. It remains a mystery to me that I got home that day unkissed.

Anyway. Back to the sticker on the bus, which I think we can all agree was a similar act of direct communication. The literate among you will notice that, tantalisingly, the name of my intended has been partially obscured. I guess you have to work for these things. Anything that's worth having, as Cheryl Cole once declared, is sure enough worth fighting for. Obviously, it didn't work out massively well for Cheryl on that occasion, but you've got to be in it to win it, as someone else more or less definitely must have said at one time or another.

As you might imagine, I have given an awful lot of thought as to the identity of this mystery man (allow me to make this assumption) whose name ends with a penultimate letter of a particular shape, followed by an 's'. Who could it be?

Here is my shortlist:

Oscar Pistorius
Pros: has magic legs; will almost certainly be able to get me tickets for the Olympics and the Paralympics.
Cons: really, really loves exercise – this suggests an issue of quite fundamental incompatibility.

Norman Reedus
Pros: Was in The Walking Dead, so may be able to introduce me to Andrew Lincoln.
Cons: My clear preference for his colleague Andrew Lincoln may prove problematic; has previously had to resort to dating the likes of Helena Christensen, so may understandably feel I am somewhat out of his league, looks-wise.

Andrew Sachs
Pros: Struggling here. Mild-mannered? Can perform amusing if politically fraught foreign accents?
Cons: Considerable age gap; feel that I would have little to say to his daughter.

Inspector Rebus
Pros: I love a Scottish man.
Cons: Feel very strongly that I already have far too many intimate relationships with fictional characters. These include, but are not limited to, Josh Lyman from The West Wing; 'Beast' from the Disney film Beauty & The Beast; Will Ladislaw; Kenny from Press Gang; Carver from The Wire (later series only); Kermit.

Bruce Willis
Pros: Fictionally brave.
Cons: Strongly dislike men in vests.

Mumford & Sons
Pros: You wait years for a man to come along, then four appear at once, playing folk-lite festival anthems. Not entirely convinced this constitutes a 'pro'.
Cons: Think I would feel more comfortable in a conventional one-on-one relationship; strongly dislike men in waistcoats.

Keith Harris
Pros: Seems sensitive.
Cons: Feel I'm not ready to be a stepmother to a child, let alone a family of manually animated puppets. Suspect their presence in the relationship would be unhealthy, especially in the bedroom. I am old-fashioned that way.

I am hoping very much that this is not a definitive list.