A desperate attempt to find the girl of my dreams continues.

As featured online @ Daily Telegraph on 23 September 2015

They can’t believe I’m drinking iced-water with a slice of lemon. It’s just not something you do ever, let alone when you’re in a Bavarian bier café.

I try to explain that having just finished a morning shift I’ve been up since 3am but they know that’s irrelevant. Had I slept in, had a late breakfast and a massage, I’d still be drinking iced-water with lemon.

I’m curious — is identifying my flaws the purpose of this “emergency meeting?” It appears not. My friend Owen, his girlfriend Lana and his sister Penny understand that they’ve dragged me 45 minutes across town and get straight to the point — “We’re here to help you with your woman problem.”

I really want to question how this constitutes an emergency but Owen has this thing where he just keeps talking. “Well, you don’t have a woman, so you don’t have a woman problem, but I think you know what we mean.”

Owen is the friend we all have, the one whose heart is in the right place, but also the one who, when told that your home life is a touch lonely, thinks to himself: “He doesn’t know my girlfriend or my sister that well, but I’ll get them involved anyway.”

“Trust us,” says Lana as she finishes off the last of a bottle of red, her actions not really filling me with a lot of confidence.

I’m told that the first thing I have to do is close down all of my dating profiles, including Tinder.

Yes! Eliminate a number of avenues to meet the opposite sex, that’ll fix my woman problem.

I won’t deny I’ve become quite attached to Tinder, mainly because I think I’ve mastered the skill of creating super-awesome profile taglines. But Owen’s quick to rag on me that:

1/ Trying to find love just like those other fishes were trying to find Nemo.

2/ Really want to meet a girl named Lucinda … on Tinder.

3/ Trying to find someone who’ll watch Magic Mike XXL with me.

… are actually super-lame not super-awesome and that I’ve mastered nothing.

We close down Tinder and another dating website account. Step one is complete and we’re onto step two. And Lana’s onto bottle two.

Step two is not a nice step. Lana starts asking me all these questions without taking a breath. It feels like I’m being interrogated by the police.

“What’s your type? What are you looking for? You’ve got a checklist, right? You don’t have a checklist?”

She turns to her Owen, “Guys have a checklist, right? You had a checklist with me, didn’t you?” He takes her by the hand, “I did, and you ticked every box my darling.”

“Shut up, sweetheart.”

That there is what I want — witty banter, she’s got to be funny.

Penny gets out a notepad and starts writing down my checklist. I find it kind of unusual she carries a notepad in her handbag but she tells me there’s so much going on in a girl’s life, a diary on its own just doesn’t cut it.

“Point one, funny. What else?”

“She really has to be a non-smoker.”

Lana advises me that these have to be absolute deal-breakers but Owen informs her that I have asthma and am likely to have an asthma attack if the air conditioning is turned down too cold. He finds his own joke hilarious.

It’s jotted down, as is my last point — she has to be good with kids. I’m the eldest of four siblings and eighteen cousins.

Three deal-breakers don’t seem like a lot to the girls and unsurprisingly Owen brings up aesthetics.

“Blonde, brunette, swimwear model or runway model?”

It really doesn’t mean that much to me and while Owen doesn’t believe it, Lana does, as she questions her love, “You think he’s friends with you for your looks?”

Before he can return fire with some waggish response, she moves on to step three — perfecting the approach.

“Normal, down-to-earth, ‘Hi, how are you going, what’s your name?’ is the way to go. Most girls just want you to be yourself.”

The other two agree, the only thing is that a basic approach is NOT being myself. I’m not into rank pick-up lines but I am one who likes to separate myself from the rest.

Should creativity fail, at the very least the girl I approach will have a good story to tell her friends the next time she sees them. I even use props sometimes. Owen and Lana don’t really like the idea but Penny’s coming around.

“I get that. I like it. My ex broke up with me via email. I was heartbroken and set on getting square, so I went round to his house and gave him a can of coke that read ‘Share a coke with dad’ and patted myself on the tummy. It took him a while to figure out what I was saying but when he did he almost fainted. I did the noble thing and I told him I wasn’t actually pregnant, but I should have let him freak out a few more weeks.”

Her story convinces the other two that a prop might not be so bad, as long as it’s cute, clever and clean. Expert Lana adds one final piece of advice, “Approaching a girl is like exercise, if you stop doing it, you become less-good at it, so you have to do it now.”

Which Owen immediately shuts down, “How would you know? You’ve never approached a guy before in your entire life, and you’ve never exercised.”

They continue bickering when an idea hits me. I ask Penny for a pen and piece of paper from her notepad. At the very least, if all an approach does it get these hooligans off my back, then I’ll do it.

The most intriguing girl at the bar sits with a girlfriend at a table close to the pier. She’s got a bit of Emily Blunt about her, she’s sharing a laugh with her friend and she doesn’t appear to smoking — two boxes ticked on the checklist. My nerves are building and my approach slows, but suddenly I’m right there.

“Hey, my name’s Matt, what’s yours?”

The nerves soon settle as she goes easy on me: “Hey Matt, I’m Chloe.”

“Chloe, I love that name, what’s your address?”

She’s straightaway a little anxious at the question. I stutter as if I’ve messed things up and reach for a note in my back pocket. I tell her that’s not what I meant to say, unfold the note and start reading from it.

“Step 1. Introduce yourself and ask her name. Step 2. Compliment her on her dress …”

I look back up feigning severe embarrassment, “Compliment her on her dress … not ask her address.”

I can actually feel myself going bright red. The performance is going well, don’t stop now. I look back down at the note and read the last line.

“Step 3. If you stuff up step 2, you’re a loser. Apologise, lower your head and trudge back over to your inebriated friends.”