I know exactly which mistake I am not making again, and here it is

I have done this before and the genuinely useful thing I can tell you is the exact mistake I will not be making again. I took a man at his word about how much time he had. He said most evenings. He meant, and I honestly think believed, most evenings for about eleven weeks.

So this time I am asking for the boring evidence first. Not promises. A description of an average fortnight in your life last month with the truth left in, including the two nights you did nothing and the Sunday you did not get out of bed.

Forty three, east London, thirteen years of leading, three dynamics, the longest five years. I work in television production, which means my own hours are unreasonable and I am in no position to be precious about anybody else's.

What I want is ongoing, structured and fairly formal in the evenings we do have. What I do not want is a man who arrives already at capacity, because he will be gone by autumn and I will have rearranged my life around him first, which is what happened and which I found humiliating in a way I had not expected.

This city makes it easy to check, in fairness. Nearly everybody here has done it before and most can say in one sentence what went wrong last time. If you cannot, or if the answer is that she was mad, I already know enough.