'He is just what a young man ought to be,' said she, 'sensible, good-humoured, lively; and I never saw such happy manners!'

After sitting and whinging about my love life to anyone who would listen, a friend suggested I turn my Cellardoor column into a blog in order to help vent my frustration and keep busy.

Now the way my life is going, I'm certainly no heroine. I'm terminally single and get attached to fictional characters far more than I ever get attached to real people. Until recently that is. After a long vacation from having feelings for anyone, I've finally gotten to know someone I really like.

What I had forgotten is just how crazy liking someone makes you. Or maybe it's just me? I find myself going out more in the hopes of seeing him, constantly looking around for him when I'm out and getting paranoid that he's in love with another girl if he so much as looks at her for a second too long. It's exhausting.

And then there's the constant "does he like me?" analysis, letting him know that you like him and figuring out what your next move is going to be, all the while spending near enough all day unwillingly thinking about them. Wow, I sound even crazier when I write it down.

I'm forever comparing my life to those of Jane's girls, and I'm currently relating to Jane Bennet. She met Mr Bingley and he was sweet and caring - one of the nicest guys you will ever meet, and you can't help but like him - just like the guy I like, who I'll call... Mr E (ha, like mystery!). She plays it cool and a few people think perhaps she's not that into him, but just when she feels comfortable he disappears and she's left heartbroken and wondering what she's done wrong.


Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not heartbroken, just a tad confused. How do I know if Mr E likes me, or just considers me a friend? I mean there's been flirting, a little hand holding and some other "signs" but then there are ignored messages, a lack of contact and another 100 negative things to cancel out the positive. The other day I put myself pretty out there, more than I've done with anyone in a long time, to no avail. And this is a nice guy - the bad guys are 1000 times worse.

I always think things were much simpler in the days of Jane Austen, if somebody liked you, they proposed. She even led us to believe that if they really loved you, it wouldn't matter if your family were embarassing and you had no money. It's much more complicated now, and with all these new ways of contacting people, such as Facebook, not only are there more ways of finding out about them (borderline stalking in some cases), but there are more ways of getting ignored. It's great!

Wow, I've written a lot for my very first blog post. I should probably stop with the rambling now. I'm not going to lie, I'm probably going to go and put Pride and Prejudice on and watch the scene where Bingley proposes!