In which I discover a bit of rough is actually quickly tricky to catch - even with a Greggs pasty

The North is a cruel mistress. As I sit here the wind has whipped through the wings of its famous steel angel and is currently ripping into my skin.
I am awaiting a date, who is very late.
It was my editor who suggested a trip North would be a good chance to inject some excitement into my column - apparently she was bored of paying thousands of pounds for copy based around my pets. Dear readers, I know, she knows nothing about writing an internationally popular column with countless females relying on my every word.
But still, I thought North London, great. A couple of nights in my fav five star boutique hotel, The Draycott, some meals in some of the chicest restaurants and a chance to stock up on some antiques from South Ken. It took a couple of emails to realise she meant the North of England, and a couple more for me locate it on the map. This is a place where people are banished in Jane Austen novels (Mr Whickham and Lydia, anyone?), a place where the woman discard coats because their skin, so radioactively orange, actually keeps them warm. And Ed wanted me to find love in this desolate backwater? I know I have succumbed to poorer and intellectually inferior lovers in the past - it befits my nurturing and patronising nature - but I was unconvinced.
Then dear reader I was offered a bonus and as quickly as my Yoga teacher, pet psychic and I could pack our bags we were off. Faust might have only sold his soul once but I find you can get more use out of it if you break it up into tiny little pieces and auction it off stage by stage.
So, I won’t go into the whole embarrassing discussion about how this date was set up, but suffice to say I didn’t fully understand my first conversation with my new gardener and I somehow agreed to a drink with his twice-divorced brother.
I have been told he is a looker because he has his own teeth and is a bit of a traveller - he spent time in Leeds and went to London once to see We Will Rock You because he is a big Queen fan.
I, truthfully told, am not holding out much hope but am taking solace in the fact that alcohol is much cheaper in Newcastle and seems to be served automatically in double measures.
Well, readers, I have been here an hour now. Waiting. I miss my cats, at least they seem excited to see me, well, when I bring them their dinner. It's humiliating sitting waiting in a bar where you can’t understand the language and I do not like the women in this town. While I reapplied my Crème de la Mer moisturiser at the bar, one girl asked me for a scoop of it. I told her no and that it was a very expensive face cream made with sea kelp. At that she sneered at me and said she could get all the seaweed she wanted for free from the beach at South Shields. I’m not sure I can deal with this level of backwardness. I’ve never seen so many pasty shops and yesterday I passed two children who were called Greggs….oh for the cute deli at the end of my street and people with refinement and a reading age over 6.
As I was musing over my lot, a hairy paw grabbed my shoulder, crushing my white silk t-shirt, “Al reet, pet,” he bellowed at me (NB. Ed was forced to hire a Geordie translator for this). This beast of a Northern man, stood in front of me. I was trying to drum up some Heathcliff fantasies with an ill-educated but passionate man and I was coming to terms with the fact that I could maybe grow to love a Newcastle football shirt as acceptable evening dress, when he looked me up and down, grabbed a pint from the bar, downed it and left.
So I waited for hours and then was snubbed by a tubby, hairy Neanderthal with barely a word of explanation flung in my direction. If this is the type of terrible behaviour I can expect from Northern men and if this feeling of worthlessness it gives me as a woman can prevail, then Readers, I think I might be in love.
Next week: I venture onto the nightclub that is actually a boat and threaten to remove a thermal layer to fit in