Dan Taylor Is Giving Up on Women Read Online Free Page A

who thought that, seeing as I was at home, we could carry on where we left off. And Julien. I will send you an email. Later.’
    With that Delphine placed her hand on the back of the hand I had resting on the mouse, and gave me a look of eternal suffering. I watched as she swayed away to her desk, absently leaning further out into the corridor to watch her go. I stayed there, long after she’d gone, with my temple rested on my hand, daydreaming about the first time I’d seen her. It was just a few weeks ago, in her kitten heels and a pencil skirt, using the aisle between the office cubicles like a catwalk, and I’d unselfconsciously stared as she disappeared from view.
    Hotpatootie1.
    Bingo. I logged on, ready to wait all morning for an important internal email.
    Lunchtime arrived, and so far work had been a pretty unproductive place to be. So I’d clearly got straight back into the swing of nine-to-five life. By midday, the majority of the office had passed my desk and, if any rivals had wanted to know how one of Europe’s premier niche trend analysis firms had enjoyed Christmas, I had the data to show it had been not only ‘not bad’, but also ‘quiet’ for nearly a hundred per cent of respondents.
    I was waiting for the office-wide email that heralded the arrival of the sandwich man. You’ve got to be quick before all that’s left is a choice of some ungodly combination involving dolphin-unfriendly tuna. While I waited an instant message from Hannah popped up on the screen.
    @Hannahmatic
: Hey mister. Know any good synonyms for average?
    @aDanTaylor
: Standard? Regular? Middling? Mediocre? Run of the mill? Pedestrian? Unremarkable? Dull?
    @Hannahmatic
: In a positive mood for a Wednesday then? You’re not making filling in this profile on soullyforyou.com any easier.
    @aDanTaylor
: Soully what now?
    @Hannahmatic
: soullyforyou.com. It’s an Internet dating site, for finding your soulmate.
    @aDanTaylor
: Are you sure about that? It sounds like a ready-meal range for the lonely and desperate.
    @Hannahmatic
: It looks good! It was featured in Time Out as fresh and new. Also it’s free, and the alternative costs sixty quid if you actually want to, y’know, arrange a date with anyone.
    @aDanTaylor
: We’re really doing this? Isn’t this idea supposed to just quietly fade away like a usual drunken resolution to change your life?
    @Hannahmatic
: No chance. You’re our project for keeping our marriage fresh and exciting. Rob wanted us to join the local swingers, I wanted a new puppy. You’re the compromise.
    @aDanTaylor
: Jesus…And so far all you’ve got is average?
    @Hannahmatic
: Oh no! Now I’ve got mediocre height, run-of-the-mill build and pedestrian hair. But I’m putting your eyes down as Mediterranean azure to pep it up a bit.
    @aDanTaylor
: You realise everyone discounts all descriptions on these things by 20% to counter exaggeration? You’re making me out to be a bug-eyed asthmatic dwarf.
    @Hannahmatic
: I was just joking, mister. I’m doing a magnificent sales job on you. Taking you down 20% would put you somewhere between Clooney and Gosling. I just realised we hadn’t asked you what kind of woman you’re actually looking for.
    There was a question. What was I looking for? What was my ‘type’? I wasn’t entirely certain. Existentially overwrought Parisians, currently juggling a string of humourless and borderline abusive international hunks?
    Drop-dead gorgeous IT experts who could learn to understand that their psychopathic tendencies are to the fore just because they’re in need of the love of a good man who won’t mock their choice of the latest reality TV ‘star’ as a personal role model?
    Cute PhD students that could excuse the use of a slightly exaggerated account of the loss of a girlfriend to get a hand inside their enticingly flimsy underpants?
    I could probably have kept going through the qualities of every woman I’d met in the past twelve to eighteen months,