Four doctors, two lawyers and a fireman.

Twenty four is a funny old age. You’re not quite grown up but you’re certainly not in your teenage years either. Half of your friends are succumbing to a comfortable lifestyle with their fella. The other half are still living for the weekend: spending their days in a meaningless albeit pretty well paid job (which has absolutely nothing to do with their university degree) and whiling away their free time lying on the sofa in their mum’s house fighting a monstrous hangover. You can’t log into your Facebook account without seeing scan pictures or photos of a couple grinning away at the camera whilst holding out her left hand, proudly displaying an engagement ring. Every time you go to a family function, you have to grin and bare your great auntie’s questions about life: “Where do you think you’ll be in ten years time?” “Whatever happened to that lad you were seeing in the summer?” and “In my day, we were all married by your age. Why is it you're still single?”

Great. Fan-fucking-tastic. Part of you is secretly glad that you aren’t one of the young married couples – facing the huge responsibility of a mortgage, a baby and a husband is sometimes too much to stomach when you still can’t quite believe that despite you brushing it off with “yeah, I only graduated a couple of years ago”, the truth is, it was actually four years ago and you’ve been in the same dead end job since (despite bitterly protesting that it was only for six months; you were only going to stay until Christmas; you’ll wait to see if you get promoted; you can’t bring yourself to leave).

But then the other part of you, the part which classes watching eight hours of Netflix in one go as a day well spent, is starting to panic. What if this is all it’s meant to be? What if I’m always the single one? The one people come to for a good night out, some fashion advice and a whinge about their fella? What if I never get married/have a baby/buy a house/get a proper job/create a grown up life? Does it really matter? Just because society expects you to do all of the above before the age of thirty two, does that mean you have to? What if you’re happy spending your days going through the McDonalds drive-thru in your Primark pyjamas and spending a small fortune on shoes and false lashes? Do you really have to give all of that up?

Well, the short answer is no. You don’t. You can do all of the fun stuff whilst spending your life with someone and the nicest part is, if you’re with the right person, all the other stuff – the scary conversations in the bank, the birth plan, the saving for your honeymoon – that will all be as equally fun. But what if the people you keep dating/meeting/sleeping with are all absolute losers? If I'm being completely honest, I have a very low opinion of men at the minute. This isn't in a modern day feminist sort of way, either. It's just what I've discovered over the last few years. You know the little part of your brain which pipes up as you're helping yourself to a rather large piece of chocolate when you're supposed to be on a diet? Yeah, I'm not sure if men have that.

The first thing you need to look at is where you keep meeting your potential love quests. For me personally, I tend to go for people I work with. Always have done. Rookie error. Don’t do it. Avoid at all costs. That isn’t to say that people who work together and live together aren’t happy - it just means that if things go wrong, work can become a very hostile environment. Which nobody needs if they’re going through a break up. If you want to wear the same dress twice in one week and you opt for the extra half an hour in bed and to dry shampoo your hair into a scruffy bun, you should bloody well get to do so in comfort without getting funny looks from across the office or any sarcastic remarks at the water fountain.

So, where else can you meet a potential love quest? Personally, I adore cute unexpected love stories. Let me tell you one I heard at the hairdressers. My hairdresser’s friend was going through a really rough time. She’d been made redundant, she was on antidepressants and things really weren’t going her way. She was filling her car up at the petrol station and without really concentrating, she’d used diesel instead of petrol. (Schoolboy error. We’ve all nearly done it at one point in our driving lives.) Hysterical, she rang the RAC and within an hour, there was a nice chappie rectifying the error. They got talking, they swapped numbers and they’re now happily married with a baby.

Let me tell you about my two sisters. My oldest sister was involved in a drunken piggyback ride on her twenty first birthday and it resulted in her breaking her jaw. She was helped by a male friend she’d known for years, who quite literally held her jaw in place whilst in A and E, and now they’ve been married for six years and have produced three wonderful boys. My other sister met her husband in Year Seven at school but, being from a Spanish family, he moved to Spain before the year was out. When he came back to Warrington, he went to a different school. They got speaking on Facebook ten years later and despite my brother in law fighting in Afghanistan at the time, hey presto, they’re married with two cherubs.

They’re the kinds of stories I love. Although each love story is unique and special to the couple it involves, I just think that sounds much nicer and much more meant to be than “I poked your mum on Facebook and met up with her in Showbar” or “We met on Tinder.”

I’ve never been one for internet dating. I’ve nothing against it – I just don’t think it’s right for me. It’s not that I think it would be awkward, I just think meeting up with someone you don’t know is a little odd. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying everyone you speak to on the internet is planning to lure you to their secret chamber and behead you – although it is a possibility! – the chances are, they’re just normal people like yourself who also don’t know how to successfully date. But there's something about purposely seeking someone for romance which strikes me as a little sad. Whatever happened to good old fashioned romance? Falling in love instead of choosing to love?

Now, I’ve never had Tinder or been on Plenty of Fish, which to my knowledge are both free to download and use. A few of my friends have. A couple have had a few dates out of it. One of them is very happily in love with her lovely boyfriend who she met on Tinder. Which is great and I couldn’t be happier for both of them. But this just doesn’t sit well with me. It’s not something I could ever see myself doing, which is ironic considering online dating pretty much relies on your written communication skills. Something I feel very confident with.

Okay. Internet dating is out of the question for me. I refuse to be involved with anyone from work. I’m no longer at university, which was the easiest place in the world to meet the opposite sex. I haven’t had my petrol station/broken chin/Afghanistan love story, so where does that leave me? I had this conversation very recently with a fellow single friend of mine. She mentioned speed dating. I howled into my glass of wine.

Me? Speed dating? The image just didn’t correlate at all. Somehow, I couldn’t quite picture myself going from table to table in some dingy little pub, shaking lots of sweaty hands and answering questions from a forty something bearded accountant such as, “Do you come here often?” Even thinking about it makes me cringe. Seriously, I thought, what are the chances of a Channing Tatum lookalike coming to a speed dating event?

Weeks later, another single friend suggested we go to a speed dating event in Manchester. I was umming and aahing about it for a few days. Would it be awkward? Uncomfortable? Boring? Would I want the ground to swallow me up? What if I ended up sat with someone who I just really didn’t click with and I had no option but to leg it to the toilet and escape through the window?

No, I scolded myself. You’re being ridiculous. A room full of nice single men from Manchester (not Warrington – thank Christ. There’s nothing worse than going on a date with someone and realising you’ve got his ex girlfriend on Facebook or that you work with his mum) sounds like an unexpectedly nice evening. I mean, what else was I going to do on a random midweek evening other than sit and watch The Chase in my pyjamas with my mum, uploading inspirational quotes to Instagram and eating my way through the kitchen? Plus, I’d promised myself that this year, I was going to try new things and speed dating was definitely new. Toughen up, kid, I thought. You’re going.

And I did.

We arrived a little bit late. The email had said the event would start at eight o’clock but we needed to be there by twenty past seven to register and mingle. Yes. You read that correctly. We were expected to mingle with the very same men we would be awkwardly chatting to half an hour later. Due to the traffic, we arrived at gone half past seven. It was taking place in La Tasca on Deansgate. A very nice little restaurant with an underground bar. We were in the bar and the whole room had been hired out for us to use.

As soon as we walked in, I got butterflies. Not because I’d found love at first sight but purely down to nerves. Why was I nervous? I honestly don’t know. I literally never get nervous – once you’ve done a fourteen minute monologue in professional theatre in nothing but your underwear, there’s not really much that phases you – so why was I suddenly feeling quiet, awkward and – dare I say it – shy? The words Emily Chriscoli and shy do not go together.

Initially, I’d been torn whether to have a drink or not but after this, I decided to get a double. Unfortunately, there was only one girl behind the bar and she didn’t speak a word of English. In fact, when we were running late, I’d phoned ahead to the bar and spoken to this girl and explained we were on our way but were bumper to bumper. She kept asking me if I wanted to book a table. She was obviously very new and was struggling to recognise the twenty pound note I handed her. I wasn’t filled with much hope for our drinks as she came back and asked me twice what my order was. She promptly forgot to bring the Diet Coke I’d ordered for my friend and knowing there was no point explaining it for a third time, I abandoned all hopes for the Diet Coke. I didn’t want to trouble her with a refund. The poor girl looked terrified at the sight of forty thirsty nervous speed daters.

Anyway, the event didn’t start at eight as promised. It started at half seven. Because of the slow moving bar experience, people didn’t take their seats until quarter to. Horrified, I realised my first date was already sat at my designated table (the girls stay seated, the boys go from table to table) and he was looking around to see where his invisible date was. The bar girl dropped the glass of vodka and coke I was buying for my other friend. She moved slower than a dying slug as she got on her hands and knees to clean it up. I was desperate. I was now the only person at the bar. We only had four minutes with each date and I’d spent well over half of that trying to get a drink.

With only twenty seconds to spare, I ran to my table, flustered and thirsty but no longer nervous. Luckily, it made a very good ice breaker as I launched into the explanation for my absence. He laughed. I laughed. We chatted (very briefly) and the hostess rang the bell, signalling the men to swap over. Wow. Was that it? Had I successfully completed my first ‘date’?

Over the course of the next twenty minutes, I met a selection of very nice men. The age range for the event was twenty four to forty. Being twenty four, I was the youngest person there which made it a little uncomfortable when I was chatting to men from the other end of the scale. Don’t get me wrong, I love an older man but the oldest I’ve been with is mid thirties and that was at a push. There’s not a huge amount of things I have in common with older men. What do you talk to them about? Motorbikes? Bald spots? Midlife crisis’?

They were all more than pleasant to speak to, except for one man whose name I will change, just in case there’s the very slim chance that he reads this. Let’s call him Barry. Barry was actually forty four. Four years older than the specified age range. Barry spent a good three minutes telling me about his problems with his ex wife (without even asking me where I’m from, what I do for a living – in fact, he didn’t ask me anything about myself at all. I sat there in silence with the occasional verbal nod as input) and how he has abandoned twenty years of working as a chef to start his own cavity wall and loft insulation business which isn’t doing very well. Great. Oh wait, his ex wife is trying to ruin his business? She’s a money grabbing leech? Nice. Barry, here’s a tip for any future dates you may go on – speedy or otherwise – don’t talk about your ex. It’s uncomfortable for all involved. Besides, you can’t move on if you’re still living in the past, son.

There was the odd person who I just didn’t click with. They were perfectly lovely, just not for me, including one bloke who was probably one of the youngest men there and he literally just said "Can I add you on Facebook?" before saying anything else. I was so taken aback, I didn't really know what to say and mumbled something about hating Facebook but he could follow me on Twitter. By the time we were on our way home, my phone lit up and low and behold, he had found me on Facebook.

Two men were foreign and one spoke such little English that I felt as if I was in a bad comedy sketch. “You are no cinema, yes?” Sorry, Baklav mate, it's never going to work. One man came over to me in the interval (yes, you get a break after every ten dates or so for a toilet break or God forbid another drinks order) and demanded to know why he hadn’t seen me yet. Maybe because you haven’t got round to my table yet?! He then proceeded to fire questions at me whilst I was trying to move over to my friend’s table to have a quick mid-date catch up. And they were the oddest questions someone can ask another person in an attempt to get to know them: "What's your favourite colour?" "Are you a Sagittarius?" and my personal favourite, "How much do you earn?" I am not kidding.

What did surprise me was how many doctors there were there. I’m not sure what I was expecting but I certainly didn’t think there’d be that many doctors. There were lots of other careers including lawyers, firemen, teachers, DJs and one guy who was a ranger. And he bloody loved his job. He had an in depth discussion with my friend about how he could kill an animal with his bare hands. Bravo, my friend. But going back to the doctors, most of them explained that due to a hectic schedule, they never have any time to meet someone. Interestingly, they were the most pleasant to speak to and unlike some of the other men, they didn’t automatically demand to know your job title. They would happily speak about anything else and only when prompted did they reveal that they were a doctor, whereas if that was me, I would be shouting it from the rooftops.

There was one doctor who works in Warrington who was particularly good looking and he had a lovely smell. (That’s always important. There was more than one person at speed dating who were in desperate need of a Tic Tac.) In the car on the way home, we all agreed that he was lovely and the following day, when you put your yes’s into the website, it came up with a match which means he’d put a yes for me too. (You also get to see who else put you down as a ‘yes’)This means that we get each other’s number and can arrange a date. I’m not sure yet whether I’ll go – it feels a little bit like meeting someone off the internet, despite having met him in the flesh, but it’s nice to know the option’s there.

Strangely enough, the whole evening was fantastic. We spent the whole night laughing – sometimes with the person across the table and the rest in the car on the way home. It was a total success and I’m glad I went, as are the other girls I went with. It was nice getting dressed up, having a few drinks and meeting new people in a new place, plus everyone went out for drinks in Manchester afterwards. Understandably, speed dating nights or singles nights have a bit of a stigma attached to them. I understand this. I had this same opinion until I went myself. The best way to describe a speed dating night is by comparing it to the evening do at a wedding. You've had a few drinks, you're in a merry mood, you're sat at a table with people you've only just met and yet it isn't awkward, it's fun. You'll never meet anyone new if you just socialise with the same group of people. You'll end up going back to old habits and trust me, still being messed about by boys who work in a call centre gets very old after a while.

There’s another speed dating night coming up in Stockton Heath and another one in Liverpool, especially for military men. If any single ladies fancy it, let me know and you’re more than welcome to come along. A few cocktails down your neck and you’ll have a laugh if nothing else. Besides, you never know, you might be telling your grandkids in fifty years time that the love of your life was date number eleven on an otherwise rainy night in February.