"My mother does not share my love of the single life"

I HAVE now been single for almost three years, and the urge to run around singing ‘Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, I’m free at last!’ still hasn’t worn off.

I’m not the only who thinks being single is ace these days, as the informative articles in lady magazines have taken to regularly extolling the benefits of single life. These include:

1. You can drown your sorrows in Cosmopolitans.

Well, seeing as this it isn’t 1998 anymore I think that most people would probably laugh in my face if I tried to order a Cosmopolitan.

2. You can ‘re-connect’ with ‘your girlies’ now that you have more time to spare.

What kind of loser decides to rescind all female friendship when they get a boyfriend? Also, if I described my friends as ‘my girlies’ one of them would probably punch me in the face.

3. You’ll lose all that weight you gained when you got in to the comfort zone of your relationship.

Are all the writers in these magazines going out with feeders or fat fetishists that insist on stuffing three 18” pizzas and garlic bread down their girlfriends’ gullets for breakfast?

4. Best of all, you can be totally independent again! You don’t have to check in with anyone else or ask their permission to watch the TV programmes you want to see. Marathon sessions of America’s Next Top Model here you come!

So when they’re not hanging with feeders, these chicks are dating men with serious control issues. Or their fathers? I would make a snide comment about ANTM marathons but I love Tyra. That woman be kerazy!

Is being in a relationship supposed to be mutually exclusive with being independent? Was I the most selfish girlfriend in the world because I always just did exactly what I wanted anyway? Errrrr… don’t answer that. The only clichéd newly single things I did was take up yoga and get a stupid haircut.

Unfortunately, my mother does not share my love of the single life and has decided that it’s her maternal duty to morph into Mrs Bennett and start planning my wedding list. (Watch out if you didn’t send us a Christmas card this year, you’re hanging on by a thread.)

I’ve explained that I believe marriage to be an archaic institution forcing women into a further self-abnegating role in society and I’m never getting involved with that sort of thing, and you know, that I’m not actually dating anyone seriously at the moment, which would seem to be a bit of an impediment.

This opened up a whole new can of worms:

Mom: You don’t have to be married to have a baby, you know.

Me: But…. I don’t want a baby. They seem to be a lot of hassle.

Mom: Don’t worry about it, darling. Your father and I can take care of it for you.

Dad: …?!

She’s gone from considering an iron-plated chastity belt to be an appropriate birthday gift when I was a teenager to making googly eyes at every passing pram in the supermarket.

What’s more, she’s even gone to the trouble of drawing up a list outlining the qualities I want in my future ‘life partner’ to help keep me focussed. That was actually pretty easy I imagine — handsome, ambitious, funny and owns a private jet. I’m easily pleased. It would be nice if he was just a tad short-sighted as well so that he thought I resembled Emma Stone. Actually, let’s make that totally blind in one eye. Just to be sure.

The list of things that I don’t want was far longer and much more varied:

* Doesn’t care what he looks like (but looks AMAZING obvs)

* No sports jerseys/tops worn outside of a playing field

* No talking about his ‘feelings’ or crying. If he was emotionally dead that would be ideal.

* No incorrect grammar. I’m not saying you’re an idiot if you can’t differentiate between ‘your’ and ‘you’re’, I’m saying you’re an idiot if you can’t differentiate between ‘your’ and ‘you’re’.

* No incorrect spelling. A guy once texted me to have a ‘wonderfull day.’ He’s more dead to me than my dead grandmother.

* No white socks with black shoes. This is self-explanatory.

* No incessant texting or phoning. Or talking. My therapist says this is due to my ‘issues with intimacy’ but what does she know?

* No annoying accents. So, no one from Derry, inner-city Dublin, New Jersey and most of the UK. Except for posh boys. Prince Harry and I shall make some rather fabulous ginger babies some day. Sleep with one eye open, Cressida. You in danger, girl.

* And last, but certainly not least, no herpes.

That’s not too much to ask for surely? If you know anyone who fulfils the above criteria please send them my way care of the Irish Examiner’s HQ.

Aida Austin is on leave