Shaw Spinster Surrenders

I have decided, at last, to surrender to Spinsterhood. The many people who have told me I am "too picky" are right. I have thought carefully about my many essential criteria in a man and realised that said criteria exclude most of the adult male population.

For example, Tories, BNP supporters and Lib Dems are out of the question. This leaves only Greens and Labour voters. Within Labour voters there are sub-criteria. If a man admires the war criminal Tony Blair in any way then we have nothing in common. Likewise if he voted for the Blair-clone David Milliband. (Begone, old grey one!) I might make an exception if he voted for David but then immediately conceded defeat at the moment of Ed's victory. However, if I had to endure a rant about how Ed Milliband has made the Labour Party unelectable for the next ten years, or how he has betrayed his brother in a coup of Biblical proportions, I would be making for the door. Anyone who criticised "Red Ed" for his support of "the unions" would be out of the running. I like trade unions. I approve of them.

Any racism at all is intolerable. This includes having a book called "How Immigration Damages Britain" in your possession. It includes telling me I live in a "rough area" and, upon further questioning, saying, "I'm not racist but there are a few Pakistani children who play at the end of your street and they do bring the house prices down." (This last from a newly qualified social worker.)

Telegraph Times, Daily Mail, Daily Express readers, no pasaran. To be in with a chance a man must read the Independent. Consideration may also be given to Guardian readers, but's let's not forget the Editor supported the invasion of Iraq.

Militant atheists get on my nerves. Fine, don't believe in God, it's a valid viewpoint but why drive it into the ground? Quoting that dull Richard Dawkins every five minutes.

Similarly, a man using hundreds of long words in everyday conversation does nothing for me. "The qualitative Freudian post-Modernist Marxist paradigm" gives me the urge to giggle, as do those arty films like "The Piano Teacher" which I once watched on a date. As my companion earnestly analysed the main character's motives for stabbing herself through the chest, I had to pinch myself to keep from inappropriately laughing.

Then you get men who try to make you read intellectual novels. I'm 38. If I wanted to read "Love in the Time of Cholera" I'd have bought it from Amazon by now. Furthermore, I don't wish to spend my spare time reading excruciatingly detailed accounts of the atrocities committed by the Israelis on the Palestinians. I already know about it. I don't need the nitty gritty. I know about climate change. I go on the marches. I don't want a lecture or an article cut from The Times about how it's all the fault of the Chinese.

Golf is another thing. I would have to be on hallucinogenic drugs to watch the Ryder Cup. Or any golf, really. Certainly to play it. I am rubbish at all sports, so why try an expensive one where you have to keep a bag of clubs in the hallway? It's bad enough tripping over the walking poles.

As for climbing, why is it that climbers always want you to dangle from a rope in companionship with them? I don't like heights. I'm about to have a bath by candlelight for the fourth night in a row because I can't be bothered to change the bathroom lightbulb. I don't even like stepladders. The highest thing I want to climb is into bed. With someone larger than me. Because I do not want to sleep with anyone thinner than me.

When I consider the time I have wasted ignoring the blatant warning signs displayed by men I have dated, I am loath to spend more time on the matter. I have a gym membership and a book to write. I can live surrounded by books of my own choice, not bother tidying up as no attractive male visitor is due to call; and no washing up is created when I don't have to faff about making meals with three or more pans, chopping boards, etc. My daughter seems to be thriving on a diet of satsumas, bread and houmous, with an occasional Nigella moment when we have a glut of vegetables from my father's allotment. The pans may stay unwashed for a few days, but what disapproving male eye is here to pass judgement? None.

Also, I am haunted by the cruel remark made by Posh Richard, with whom I endured a short-lived romance. In revenge for me telling him I would never exchange sex texts with anyone, unless for £3.50 a text, he taunted me with the following:

"You are so left-wing you will be single forever, unless George Galloway will sleep with you."

The only reasonable answer to this was the one I gave him, which was that I had already slept with George Galloway, but this was untrue.

It now seems that there really is only George Galloway - or possibly Neil Kinnock, say if Glenys was to run off with some junior MEP or other. Neither of these prospects appeal. I've already been on a date with our local Labour Party oraniser, and he was shorter than me, with grey plastic mock-croc shoes and all the charisma, passion etc. of a dead haddock.

I am under no illusions. I know that I am pushing 39 and cannot realistically afford to be picky. However, my wise daughter (aged 11) has counselled me, "Don't accept second best, even in a time of austerity" and so I remain alone, growing ever more eccentric and shouting at George Osborne when he is on TV, for all the world as if he can hear me.