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then,’ I sighed with relief. ‘I had an awful feeling for a moment that he was exactly my type.’
    I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Vic is a phenomenon of our times. I used to think I was unlucky, but then I found out I was just single and averagely tolerant of failure, which made me a pushover for layabouts. It is possible that married readers are unfamiliar with the world of Vic, but each single woman discovers him for herself in a very short while. The telltale clue is when you find yourself paying for both dinners, but pretending not to notice. ‘Did I? Never mind, it’s only money. Tell me again about this project for knitting old cassette tape into lightweight blankets for the homeless, and charging them ten quid each. It sounds fascinating.’
    Feminists, of course, are not supposed to admit that there is a man shortage. We have this horrible feeling that it will give ammunition to the backlash, who will jump up and down saying ‘Tee hee! Told you! Only yourselves to blame!’ But if there
were
a man shortage, hypothetically speaking, and itstretched out arid and flat to the far horizon, then you see that little shimmering dot in the distance? The one coming steadily towards you, like Omar Sharif in
Lawrence of Arabia,
getting slowly bigger and bigger and more sinister, as the only sign of available life? It’s Vic.
    ‘Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, Vic,’ goes the prune-counting of the wised-up single woman each morning. ‘Rich man, poor man, Vic, beggar man, thief, Vic.’ Vic ought to be more substantially represented in this litany, really; but you get the gist. The really interesting thing, however, is not that single women are eating too many prunes. It is that Vic, like the devil, is everywhere, yet always comes as a surprise. When he’s somebody else’s Vic, you can identify him at once. Whereas when he is your own, and he is blatantly using your mains electricity to recharge his car battery again, you can’t.
    ‘Ooh, so when will I get to meet him?’ you say to a friend who recently went out with Vic on a first date.
    ‘Soon, I expect. He’s moved in.’
    There is a short pause, while you tell yourself it’s none of your business.
    ‘Really?’ you say, non-committally.
    ‘It’s working out quite well, actually. I mean, being home all day he can take in the milk.’
    ‘Great.’
    ‘And he cooks meals and things, and above all he trusts me with his problems.’
    ‘What does he do, then, exactly?’
    ‘He’s such a free spirit. Ha ha good old Vic.’
    ‘No, but what does he do?’
    ‘He used to be a disc jockey. And he’s got so many schemes he doesn’t know where to start. He reckons he needs a mobile phone and some headed notepaper before he can really get going. But unfortunately he hasn’t got either at the moment.’
    ‘He sounds – er, laid back.’
    ‘Yes! Sometimes we laugh about it. I say he’s so laid back he’ll fall off and hurt himself.’
    ‘Ho ho,’ you say, politely.
    They are not all called Vic, incidentally. It would make things too easy if they were. But I do feel it is worthwhile to list a few of the obvious warning signs, so that more women can be spared the misery of asking Vic, on some fateful day, ‘Did you only love me for my free battery-charging facilities?’ and then waiting for five agonizing minutes while he seriously weighs up the pros and cons. The term ‘free spirit’ ought to set alarm bells clanging; also Vic’s habit of abruptly crossing the road to avoid walking past his bank. Watch out, too, for his suggestion (curious for a free spirit, after all) that you take out wills in one another’s favour after only a brief acquaintance.
    The really clever thing about Vic is that he feels most comfortable with women who are independent, for reasons beyond the obvious. To an independent woman, you see, the notion of sponging is so unthinkable that she can’t bring herself to accuse anybody else of doing it. But the sad fact is,