Dear Diary. Girlfriend and I are eating lunch: a kebab from the local kebab shop.

But suddenly she stops eating her kebab. Then she looks at me with fear.

Then she gags, like a cat trying to throw up a hairball.

The noise she makes is like this: "Huh-UMM!"

I've seen this before. Many times, in fact. Ever since she became pregnant, eating has become a challenge for her. Sometimes she'll retch. Sometimes she'll vomit on the floor.

Then she points to a parcel on a shelf. "MMM," she says, which, when translated to normal speak, means "This parcel came for you today."

Sweet, a parcel! I forget about Girlfriend and open the parcel. It's Joop aftershave. The one I ordered from Amazon.

I spray some of the aftershave on myself.

"It's just like I remember," I say to Girlfriend. "The smell of failure."

You see, I used to wear Joop in my early 20s when I would go to clubs and try to pick up women. I never went home with a single woman, which is why the smell of Joop is, for me, the smell of failure. It's also the smell of being sick on the floor of Bar Riza on Broad Steet, Birmingham.

That night, I go through my list of things I need to be attractive:

1. Be younger than 30 (currently impossible unless I build a reverse ageing machine)
2. Be rich
3. Wear aftershave
4. Do dangerous sports (snowboarding, skateboarding, etc.)
5. Have hair
6. Have tattoos
7. Have muscles
8. Have high testosterone
9. Have straight white teeth

I look at my list and frown. So far I've only achieved one of the things - wear aftershave. Fuck me. At this rate, I'll be an old man by the time I've finished the list. And by then I'll be too old to be considered attractive anyway due to my wrinkled old man face.

Also, I probably only have until forty, tops, to look attractive. At forty, my looks will rapidly go downhill. And come 65, I'll look like death warmed up.