July 15, 2019. The day after my first big breakup. According to the little dog-eared five-year diary I keep in the drawer next to my bed, I cycled into work in my biggest pair of sunglasses and my best friend met me on a bench with a packet of Sainsbury’s strawberry pencils because I couldn’t face the thought of going home to my flat.
The same day the following year looked pretty different, unsurprisingly. This frightening thing called coronavirus had arrived (yep, we still used the long version back then) and apparently I did two workouts in my parents’ garden because there was literally nothing else to do. I won’t bore you with the details of my 2021 and 2022 entries because they largely involve dates with men who turned out to be, well, early-days Dexters — a reference you’ll understand if you’ve ever binged and blubbered over One Day, David Nicholls’ famed novel-turned-Netflix adaptation like me.
