The Bolivian

I would say the date was a resounding success, as first dates go. It kicked off in a cocktail place on Kingly Street. She ran a little late but I managed to amuse myself with some cocktails while I waited. We talked about all sorts of things like you do on first dates (horse whispering, the relative merits of ducks vs chickens and shopping) while drinking really quite a lot of cocktails.

She is from Bolivia (yes I know another South American girl, when will I learn eh?) and has absolutely stunning hair, an amazing figure and lovely eyes. She made me laugh a lot. The hours just flew by, which is nice as this was my first proper 'first date' in ages. I've been seeing people but it's been all very casual up until this point so it's been more of a bump into someone at a party, maybe go to an after party and then, well. Anyway this was different this was a 'lets go on a date' thing.

I must admit my dating skills had got a bit rusty, it's my own fault I suppose. Lack of use and all that but I'd forgotten how much fun it was. I like the element of surprise in it, the slight concern that they might not turn up or if they do they might say something awful. Once I was on a date when a girl started going on about how awful 'foreign' are. I didn't see her again.

After the bar stopped serving booze we drifted on to a late-night French place for a bit more wine. We equipped ourselves with a very reasonable bottle of white wine and spent a lot of time people watching, in a very giggly way. You get an interesting mix of types at these rare late-night places London so it's always fun.

When we had seen off the wine we found ourselves to be rather hungry so we went to Bar Italia for some late night food - I hadn't eaten since lunch time and despite my best efforts I appeared to be getting a touch drink. As usual it was buzzing with exciting types but at this point I got rather distracted.

This is because I was - with help from The Bolivian - trying to work out the acceptable places to kiss someone on a first date. It seems that the back of the hands and the cheeks are the only places that one should kiss on a first date. Nothing below the neck, nothing above the eye-line. I don't know why I started asking this but it was making me laugh an awful lot.

While trying to work out the relative levels of 'danger' of the neck vs the ears things ended up involving a practical demonstration. This is because we needed to set a standard value of kiss on the lips compared to kisses on other parts of the body. So in the name of scientific progress we kissed three times to start off with. Well this was for science.

The first kiss was a a quick peck (designated as a neutral or friend kiss). The next one was a slightly slower kiss with just the slightest dash of lip nibbling (this was a 'I don't think we are just friends' kiss) and then finally a proper slow kiss for five seconds, where there may have been a bit of holding the back of heads on my part. Well this is science, and it might have affected the validity of our testing if I hadn't shown her what a proper kiss was.

I could feel a her knees shake a little bit and she got all flushed on her face and neck which was deeply charming.

After a little further scientific testing it was time to amble home. After all I can't give it all up on a first date, I have a reputation to protect and a paper on kissing to submit to New Scientist.