Read Online Cloudy with a Chance of Love by Fiona Collins - Free Book Online

speed dating, singles’ nights, murder mystery nights which were really cop-off junkets, none of it. I really wasn’t sure it was an arena I wanted to enter. I was taking my life in my hands and I’d probably trip over spectacularly and drop it. Right down Gaga’s bacon-y cleavage, probably.
    I re-swivelled the waistband of my skirt – this skirt always twizzled round – and tried to hold my stomach in, to no avail. Sam was often suggesting fitness DVDs to me; she was currently extolling the virtues of some American woman called Kimberley Lake-Payne and her ‘amazing’ 60 Day T&A Blast DVD, as well as Cardio Power , Storm-Ripped Body Pump and Tummy Shrink Showdown . Did I want to borrow any of them? I always declined. Maybe one day I would stop eating so much chocolate and start shaking my sizeable booty in Lycra, on some kind of fitness drive, but I liked to eat. I enjoyed not counting calories or working out.
    â€˜Last time I came to one of these I burnt six hundred calories on the dancefloor,’ pronounced Sam. ‘I was wearing my Fitbit, inside my bra.’
    â€˜You’ve been to speed dating before? You never said.’
    â€˜No, well, it wasn’t a huge success. It was when I first split with Graham.’
    â€˜Did you meet anyone?’
    â€˜Sadly, yes, a bloke I dated for two months. Jacob – he was really nice, at first. Except it turned out he still lived with his mum and– worse – that he was Chief Swords Person in medieval re-enactment thingies in Richmond Park, every Sunday. The mum situation I could have lived with – if you excuse the pun – but it was the muddy bayonet in the backpack which was the deal-breaker.’
    â€˜I bet it was!’ I said. ‘You could have told us. It would have given us hours of fun.’
    Sam shrugged. ‘It wasn’t my finest hour. I’m hoping for better tonight.’
    â€˜So, what happens after we register?’ I said, twizzling my waistband again. ‘Do we get name badges? I don’t want a hole pricked in this blouse.’
    â€˜No, we don’t want any pricks!’ laughed Sam, and the girl in front of us turned round and smiled wryly.
    â€˜Good luck with that,’ she said.
    It didn’t exactly restore any confidence. I had a sudden desire to go home and put my jammies on. Sam must have read my thoughts.
    â€˜Come on, it’ll be fine. There are some nice men out there, there has to be! Sometimes they’re right under your nose.’
    I caught the eye of the other Michael Jackson – complete with red leather Thriller jacket, white socks and black slip-on shoes – and he gave me a wrinkly wink. I really wasn’t sure about that.
    After we’d registered, and I’d got four whacking great holes in my blouse courtesy of the girl on the desk who might want to invest in some reading glasses, we stood among the expectant crowd waiting to be told what to do. Sam ran through the list of questions she had for prospective suitors, written in the Notes section of her phone. They included: ‘What do you like doing at the weekends?’; ‘What is your view on the healing power of crystals?’; ‘Do you know how to operate a washing machine?’ and ‘Have you ever, or will you ever, own a status dog?’
    â€˜What on earth is a status dog?’ I asked.
    â€˜A scary dog. You know, like a bulldog or something. The ones men walk down the street with, in order to look hard. It would be a deal-breaker. I don’t like dogs much as it is.’
    I laughed. ‘Right. Okay.’
    â€˜You have to break down your criteria,’ said Sam. ‘I know you think I’m away with the fairies half the time, but I can also be completely practical when it comes to men.’
    â€˜I know you can,’ I said. Sam had been known to come up with pie charts detailing her compatibility with the men she was dating.
    What were my